That is probably an unnecessary query but just the same I had to ask it. My wife and I have an almost nagging habit while driving along country roads, seeing something that ignites a series of questions. Maybe a property along the road that has changed; and we see that old house where an old lady was seen coming out to the road to get her mail, and later, now we see the grass growing up around the house. We would talk about it and wonder if the old lady died and now, we would wonder, what’s going to happen to her property.

We had noticed a semi tractor parked on the front of the property before, with a FOR SALE sign on it, and thought maybe a son or other relative was a truck driver and if we might see some more changes yet in the property. Just as we wondered, it wasn’t long until someone began to fix up the property, tearing down an old dilapidated barn, its usefulness probably ended twenty-five years or more ago and now the descendants finally got rid of it. Now that house looks a lot more lived in and those changes simply chronicled the same generational improvements that have been the norm for years.

Being “book nuts”, as some of our friends would secretly surmise, we become possessors of pieces of history that bring even more questions. Whenever a Bible or some devotional book is among the goodies in a book sale or yard sale (where we usually head for that book table first) we usually end up picking up yet another copy of the Bible. A discarded Bible is a yellow flag to people like us. WHY did they toss this in their downsizing or cleaning up the house? Something even worse than throwing a Bible away is getting rid of family pictures. History surely must be a dreaded subject to some; especially the kind of history that should live in the minds of descendants: What did grampa look like – perhaps he had died years before the person tossing the photos was born. What was their house like? Did they have a garden? Wasn’t there a big old tree out there next to the barn? Or the big grape arbor that made a virtual wall at the back porch?

Is there no longing or concern for such things, or does time just come charging along like a ravaging animal causing such confusion we simply go temporarily berserk? On one of our book finds I picked up one of the many devotional Bibles that a popular preacher or author edits; this one was by Max Lucado, whose popularity and obvious success has caused some people in his fellowship to wonder about him. Such observations are often responsible for on-lookers to be the judge and jury to write off successful people, especially if there is a twinge of jealousy to kindle the fire. Be that whatever it may, the bigger question to me is what ever caused a young girl to let loose of a Bible that was presented to them by a grandparent? The young lady, in this case, was obviously interested in this particular book for a while because there are notes written on various pages. There were even a couple other wisps of information – a bookmark that had been part of the presentation when the Bible was given to this young lady.

Why? What happened? Was there a tragic accident, or unexpected illness that interrupted this young life or did she simply lose interest in the spiritual part of life? We will probably never know the answers to our questions and perhaps this might be one of those little nudges along our way to remind us to cherish the moments in our own lives. Life is full of such nudges and whispers from the “great cloud of witnesses” as the book of Hebrews suggest. Year ago Dale Evans Rogers wrote a little book, “Angel Unaware” and thousands of people were blessed from her little book of less than 200 pages. Life is a proving grounds where we are given little or perhaps no information about what we might want to do with our lives. When I was in high school I did not have the slightest idea of what kind of a career I should search out, that is, once my Dad told me he didn’t want me to be a mold maker like he had been. That blew away my initial plans. Some kids seemed to have their thoughts or “soldiers lined up” just right; and today some I knew like that are themselves among those listed in “Deceased Classmates of the Class of 1950”. Here I am still observing others and wondering why.

I am grateful to have “found” a great lady to live out my life, 56 years so far, and together we can drive around, or maybe just read about people and wonder why. It gives great satisfaction and gratefulness to see people whose lives manifest they recognized a good way and chose that way. Others muddle through life without a clue. Perhaps as you read this you might need to sort out your life as well. Do you have a Bible your grandparent or parents gave you and it’s been on a shelf somewhere or worse, still in the box? Or maybe you have that Bible and haven’t been as faithful as even you would like to have been. I just hope your Bible and special gift is not found on a table with an assortment of books that someone like us will find and think, “I wonder why they got rid of this book?”

THE WORDWRIGHT