Comforting Words

I’ve spent many pleasant hours of my life in libraries. Since childhood, I’ve enjoyed searching for books to read for pleasure, whether by using old fashioned card catalogs filled with paper summaries stuffed in drawers, newer computerized digital inventories, a modern app on my iPad that allows me to search my library’s collection easily, or just wandering among the bookshelves. In college, I pored over the campus library’s books of literary criticism to support my research for term papers. As an English major, I was thankful that the literature section was housed on the second floor of the old library and not the basement, where rats were rumored to roam.

Although the pandemic has halted my actual trips to libraries, I have been thankful for online resources and electronic books available through our public library. In the two years I have not visited a library, I’ve read more books each month than I ever have read before. From the comfort and safety of home, I’ve searched for and found e-books that have entertained and distracted me from coronavirus concerns. 

Similarly, my son, Alex, has sought entertainment from his beloved books during the isolation of the pandemic that has kept him home, too. He possesses a stack of World Almanacs from the past several years. Their condition demonstrates how often he consults these valued books: covers taped back into place and soft, ruffled pages from multiple thumb-throughs as he searches for answers to questions and confirms data he often already knows.

In addition to his annual almanacs, dictionaries, and many other reference books, Alex gained another treasured guide book as a 2020 Christmas gift from my parents: a study Bible. Every evening of 2021 before Alex went to bed, I would read aloud from his Bible at his request. We started with the Gospels and then worked our way through the rest of the New Testament. From there, we read Psalms and Proverbs together. The past few months, he has had me re-reading Psalms to him, and he always says, “Amen” when I finish a passage before he goes to sleep for the night.

Because Alex isn’t very chatty, we’re not always sure what he’s thinking. However, we soon learned that he found those scriptures soothing as they settled his uneasy thoughts. On the Fourth of July, when our neighborhood sounded like a war zone all evening with loud fireworks exploding late into the night, we heard him calling from his bedroom, “Need to read the Bible!” After I read a few passages to him, he rolled over in his bed, content and calm, and he slept peacefully through the night. When he has had panic attacks in the past year, we have found that reading the Bible to him, quoting the 23rd Psalm, and saying the Lord’s Prayer aloud have amazing powers to ease his fears. 

Like Alex, I have found scriptures helpful and reassuring during these troubled times. As I read daily devotionals and ponder over my Bible studies, I find myself drawn to Bible verses that address “worrying” and “waiting.” A quick scan through the inspirational Instagram posts I have saved the past year, especially those from The 700 Club and The Jerusalem Prayer Team, reveals that I’m seeking the same comforting words that Alex is. Since I’m good at worrying and not so good at waiting, I have written down meaningful scriptures and committed some to memory to help me fret less and be more patient. As Alex has reminded me, when life seems overwhelming and comforting words will help, “Need to read the Bible!”

“I sought the Lord, and he answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.” Psalm 34:4