Many years ago, late 90s, I would find myself sitting in a small bedroom on Main Street with Mrs. Aurelia Evans. It was in a home that her father had built —or at least bought and to which he had added a second story. But I imagine her little shoes had danced all over those hardwood floors. Yet now her flats were limited to this small square living area that included her bed and a side table, a dresser, a portable potty, two chairs and a TV.
On occasion I would take “Miss Aurelia” cheese straws which she would quickly hide under her chair for when the Honorable Sam Nunn would stop by for a visit. One day I asked her, “When you aren’t visiting, how do you spend your time?” To which she responded, I watch the Braves and I read my Bible. “Anything specific?” I questioned. “Well, I can’t see to read anymore so I just turn to the passages I know for memory and ‘read’ those.” “What would ‘those’ be?” I asked. She named several passages, but it was no surprise that among her answer was Psalm 23. I never forgot that particular visit.
Flash forward 25 years. I was playing for a funeral and the presiding preacher asked the congregation to “read” with him the 23rd Psalm. Which we did. King James style. I remembered Miss Aurelia.
This week I pulled my mother’s Bible off her bookshelf, pulled up a folding chair, took a seat next to her bed in the nursing home and opened to Psalm 23. She was awake but her eyes were closed. When I began reading, her lips began moving, and together we “read” the beautiful shepherd song. At the end of the passage she had inscribed, “Thank You, Father.” Remembering my own Scripture reading from the morning, I turned to Psalm 139 and found that she had numerous verses underlined and notes made in the margin of this one as well. I began at verse one, but we “read” together verses 23-24, Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
It was then that I remembered what I had forgotten: her most beloved passage of all time. I turned there and, sure enough, in the margin she had written, “My favorite psalm since I was a child.” And so with her eyes shut, her mouth moving, her voice faint, and my attempt at translating the NIV into the King James Version which she would have memorized as a child, we “read” together:
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills,
From whence cometh my help.
My help cometh from the LORD,
Which made heaven and earth.
He will not suffer thy foot to be moved:
He that keepeth thee will not slumber.
Behold, he that keepeth Israel
Shall neither slumber nor sleep.
The LORD is thy keeper:
The LORD is thy shade upon thy right hand.
The sun shall not smite thee by day,
Nor the moon by night.
The LORD shall preserve thee from all evil:
He shall preserve thy soul.
The LORD shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in
From this time forth, and even for evermore.“
Psalm 121:1-8 KJ
This One Who has kept my mother through a lifetime, this One Who has preserved her going out and her coming in, still carries her today, and will soon see her Home. Thanks be to God for His faithful and enduring Word.
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