For the niece who loves the woman who taught her this book and has begun to read past the ribbon.
Second Thursday after the funeral, and the house still carries the faint fragrance of cedar.
The Bible came home from the hospital in a paper bag beside a hairbrush and a pair of reading glasses. You set it on the dining table where she taught, the same table where beans simmered in the next room and children wandered through looking for spoons. The red ribbon is exactly where she left it, lying flat down the gutter of the page at John 14.
You know exactly what she believed about that verse. She said it plainly, patiently, the way she said everything, and she was not being careless when she said it. She prayed over your schooling. She bought uniforms the year the money ran out. She made this book feel safe in your hands when nothing else in the house did.
Now you're reading the words Jesus spoke, and something in the room is shifting. Not an argument. A door.
You close the cover immediately, because curiosity feels like disloyalty and you would rather be loyal than correct.
You can honor the woman who handed you this book and read every word printed in it. The Holy Spirit is the one opening it in front of you now, at this table, in this quiet house. Scripture carries the authority there, and it has never asked for a single ounce of contempt for reading on.
What The Red Ribbon Was Marking
A ribbon marks a place somebody treasured. It does not block off the rest of the chapter, and it was never made to do that kind of work.
She left it at John 14 because that page was precious to her. She read it, taught it, and rested her whole weight on it through far more than you were ever told about. The ribbon is a record of her affection rather than a ruling about how far God is allowed to go.
Fear knows the difference and hides it from you anyway. Keep your auntie, it says, or keep what you are reading, because you cannot possibly hold both.
Her ribbon marks where she stood, not where the promise runs out. God's word outlasts every marker anybody has ever laid across it. The Holy Spirit turns the page under your hand, gently, the way she used to turn it for you.
Her teaching can be completely sincere without being the last word. Your fresh reading can be honest without becoming an accusation against a woman who is not here to answer. Honor has never meant treating one careful conclusion as equal in weight to the printed promise beside it.
Notice how long you have carried this all by yourself. You have read that page before the house woke up, turning the verse over and saying nothing about it to anybody. That is not a fragile faith fraying at the edges. That is a strong faith carrying a question nobody offered to help you carry.
Notice how much of her you keep without any effort at all. The habit of opening this book before the house wakes came from her. The instinct to feed people while you teach them came from her. Those are not small inheritances, and none of them depends on one sentence about an earlier era.
The Promise She Kept Her Ribbon In
Examine the verse the ribbon has been lying against all these years.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.John 14:12 (KJV)
Notice who the weight rests on. Jesus doesn't say that the one who believes is impressive, qualified, or unusually capable. He says the works come because He goes to the Father, which puts the whole arrangement on His side of the table rather than yours.
That matters enormously at this particular table. Nothing here asks you to be more confident of yourself than you are, and nothing here asks you to work up a feeling you can't produce.
The promise rests on Christ going to the Father, never on how well you perform. The Holy Spirit does the carrying throughout this house. Scripture settles the weight on His side of the table, and not one pound of it is moved across to you.
Nothing in the sentence requires a crowd, a platform or a particular kind of room either. The works are tied to Christ and to the Father, which is a quieter arrangement than most of the pictures you have been shown.
So the verse can stay open in front of you while you read it slowly. You don't have to decide tonight what it means for every room you have ever sat in. You only have to stop closing the cover every time the page opens wider.
Gratitude With The Page Held Open
The turn here is smaller than a verdict and far kinder than the one you were bracing for.
Freedom looks like this. One hand can rest on the cover she carried while the other keeps the page turned. Your heart can bless the woman who taught you while your reading keeps going past the ribbon. Nothing has to be announced at a family gathering or corrected in front of anybody at all.
The Word is living, which doesn't mean its truth shifts under you. It means no beloved human hand ever reached the bottom of it, including hers, and she would have said so first.
You are not required to stop where a woman you loved stopped reading. She was taught by the Holy Spirit and so are you, at the same table, in the same kitchen. It is written that He guides His people into truth, and none of that guiding has ever traveled through contempt.
If grief rises while you sit with that book, let it rise without apology. Outgrowing a conclusion that once made your whole world feel orderly is a real loss, even when what stands behind it is better. Grief can land on an open page without ever shutting the book.
The ribbon is not a chain across the chapter. It is a marker, and it shows that a woman you loved sat on this exact page and looked toward God with everything she had. You can bless the marker and keep reading, and the cedar fragrance in the house does not have to fade for that to be true.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
You speak from inside a family and from inside Christ, and neither one was ever something you applied for. What God does at this table, and the hour He picks, stays entirely with Him. These are the sentences of a niece thinking out loud in her auntie's kitchen, and no accusation is anywhere in them.
This kitchen is not a courtroom, and the auntie who put this Bible into my hands is not standing in one. Scripture is open wider than the ribbon that marks it, and it has never asked me to hand back one hour of her kindness. The Holy Spirit is teaching me now the way she taught me then, gently and without contempt. I hold gratitude in one hand and a living promise in the other, and both of them are mine. I am free to be surprised. Cedar in this hallway, beans on the stove, and John fourteen lying open on her table: every bit of it is still mine. Whatever He does next in this house is His to do and mine to welcome.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
John 14:12
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
