Rose's Bible

The first thing I ever noticed about Rose was her Bible. It was beat up. It was an NIV Study Bible and it was in tatters. She'd even duct taped the spine, to keep it from splitting in half. Her husband, Bruce Fish, works at a rural dump. I kept thinking he'd pulled this Bible from the heaps of refuse. This was not the case.

I had a coach in high school that said that if we wanted to be great basketball players we needed to dribble the ball everywhere we went. This is the same principle that Rose uses for her bible. Wherever she goes her Bible is with her. She'll even bring it out in the boat when we go fishing. Rose is more likely to have her Bible than her purse.

Rose has a mandatory Bible study every morning at 10:30. The whole world stops and whoever is around has no choice but to participate Recently French and I were ice-fishing with Bruce Fish and it was 10:30. Out comes her wretched looking Bible. We weren't paying enough attention so she handed it to French to read the day's passage. Usually he can't even find his Bible, but he stopped what he was doing and read aloud. Rose looked well pleased.

I recently asked her how her Bible got so battered. She just shrugged. French said: “Tell him your system Rose.” She just shrugged again. Rose is so shy. French said: “Rose reads the Old Testament once a year, and the New Testament twice, she also reads all of Proverbs once a month”. Turns out that this has been her system for over twenty years. That certainly accounts for the state of her Bible.

Rose looked at me and said: “You go read Proverbs 3:5-6.”