Granddaddy’s Bible

My sister asked me a week or so ago if I’d like to have my grandfather’s Bible. He was the Chancellor I was named after, born in 1879. I told her I’d love to have it. She sent it to me. And as I looked over its pages, and read between the lines I think I saw something I’d never thought about.

He received or purchased this Bible when he was 40 years old, according to the inside cover: 1919 with his name. In the front of the Bible he had copied out a single verse, as though to console himself: “Blessed are ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” From the Lucan beatitudes. 

I thought about that a bit. The man was 40. His father (a Civil War vet who contracted TB) had died at a sanitarium for those with consumption a month before he turned 11. He had never been married. He had no children. And he was rather impoverished. He was comforting himself that at least in the next age he would be blessed, even if not in the present age. I found that profoundly sad.

He did have quite a change in fortune, however. Even though he was 40, the following year he proposed to Bessie James Maupin (herself 36) and she accepted and they were married on her birthday, February 14th. Ten months later they had a son, my father. And my mother’s father (a long time family friend of my dad’s mom) helped them purchase the home that my dad grew up in. 

So, in the long run, Chancellor Weedon lived into his 90’s and was blessed with two boys (both of whom made it home from WWII) and eight grandchildren and he even got to see some of his great grandchildren. But I do wonder if he’d have received any of those blessings for the awesome gifts they are in this present age, had he not consoled himself with the future kingdom and realized that it would be blessing enough, indeed blessing far more than he could ever dream. And how like our God to make a gift to such a man of many earthly blessings besides! Because he sought first the kingdom, “all these things” were indeed “added” unto him.