Themes from Mom's Bible

It's nearly Mother's Day and I've been thinking about my Mom a lot.  More than 30 years ago she was diagnosed with cancer.  I have her Bible that she carried during that time.  I've written about it many, many times on this blog.  It was the third post I published, appropriately called "Mom's Bible."

There are so many incredible nuggets found in the pages of her Bible.  There are verses underlined with two or three words written in the margins.  Dozens of quotes, verses and sayings found on the pages in the front and back of her Bible.  They are a treasure to me.

In 2013 I posted "word clouds" created by Wordle.  The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.   I took all the sayings written in Mom's Bible and here's what I got:

I realize there are a lot of words and it might seem like there is no way to narrow them down into themes, but I think I've done it.  Of course, the longer I worked on this, the more I realized this was going to turn into a series of posts instead of a single post!  In the days ahead I'll be exploring these six themes from Mom's Bible:

Encourage Yourself
Have a Prayer Life
Guard Your Tongue
Be Content
Be Grateful
Have Faith/Trust in God

Before I get to those themes, I want to re-post a story:

Two friends were walking through the desert. During some point of the journey they had an argument, and one friend slapped the other one in the face. The one who got slapped was hurt, but without saying anything,wrote in the sand:

"Today my best friend slapped me in the face."

They kept on walking until they found an oasis, where they decided to take a bath. The one, who had been slapped, got stuck in the mire and started drowning, but the friend saved him. After the friend recovered from the near drowning, he wrote on a stone:

"Today my best friend saved my life."

The friend who had slapped and saved his best friend asked him, "After I hurt you, you wrote in the sand and now, you write on a stone, why?"

The other friend replied: "When someone hurts us, we should write it down in sand where winds of forgiveness can erase it away. But, when someone does something good for us, we must engrave it in stone where no wind can ever erase it."

Learn to write your hurts in the sand, and to carve your benefits in stone.
~ Author Unknown

I consider Mom's Bible her stone.  She wrote her blessings, her faith, and her prayers.  It's a stone that I have learned so much from.