The Bible Beside a Coffee Cup: A Story of Goodness that Chases Us

I want to tell you a story. 

It’s the story of this Bible, which I photographed just a few days ago after finding it on our back deck, resting beside a half-empty cup of coffee. 

Etched in the bottom right, barely visible anymore, is my husband’s name: Christopher Alan Polski. It’s the Bible my husband refers to as “his companion” when he left for college in 1986. 

In it are pages full of highlighted verses, truths that my husband poured over during long nights of anguish. Others set apart because they spoke to him through the Spirit during a sermon or a Bible class. 

In it are notes from influential pastors who preached from its inerrant words. The names of these pastors are found throughout the margins, including the name of my father written on many Old and New Testament passages. He calls my father one of his greatest mentors, and when I see his name in the pages of my husband’s Bible, I’m overcome by the goodness of God. 

Goodness and mercy chase us – relentlessly – all the days of our life. And every once in a while, we stop long enough to notice, and we greet them with tears of gratitude. 

And then when a new Bible was gifted to my husband, this old one found a place on the shelf in his current office. It stood like an Ebenezer – a pile of stones reminding us of God’s faithfulness. 

It stayed there until my son went to college. 

My husband told me he was gifting the Bible to our son as something to take with him when he left for school. I watched my husband as he thoughtfully jotted down a note in the front page. As he wrote with obvious tenderness, I prayed that the goodness of God would chase down my fast-sprinting and free-spirited boy. 

But to be honest, I doubted. 

Though God never stopped pursuing him, our son spent his high school chasing everything he thought would satisfy him, build him up, and make him more popular. 

We joined in that pursuit – tirelessly exhorting, praying, loving, and crying out in confusion over the path our son had chosen. There were sleepless nights spent begging God to do a miracle in our prodigal’s heart. There were other sleepless nights fighting to find him – physically, emotionally. 

He graduated, and we believed better things were on the horizon. Would that include a similar pouring over these pages like my husband did at the same age? 

I begged God that it would. But the journey only became more trying. 

One night, after hitting rock bottom, he called us. I was pacing in the basement of a church where a concert was happening right above me. Over his tears of anguish, I heard the words sung, “All your works are good…” 

Are they good? Is this your goodness, Lord? 

In the gaps of silence, my son finally said with a yearning I had not heard before: “All I know to do is talk to God and read my Bible.”

His Bible. 

Was it that Bible? 

I wondered because I hadn’t seen it come home. In my frustration, I simply figured it had been misplaced or lost, and my heart broke when I thought of the possibility. 

But he said he was pouring over his Bible. 

And so, we prayed. For more than a year, we pleaded with God to use these challenges in our son’s life. We prayed through doubt and we prayed with hope. We prayed together and we prayed in the quietness of our own heart. 

We asked God to reveal himself to our son. There was not a day that went by that I did not utter that prayer multiple times over. 

It’s been almost four years since that phone call his first year away at college, and we have seen…first-hand…God’s goodness chase down our son. And in his providence, we have seen…first-hand…our son’s surrender to God’s pursuit. 

It’s not lost on me that many parents utter similar prayers for years – even decades. But I believe – with all my being – that God works through those prayers of faith. I believe that he is doing immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (Eph. 3:20) even when we can’t see it. Even when the road seems nothing but bleak. 

And why? Because God is good. 

All the time. 

That half-empty cup of coffee belonged to my son. He had left it there after spending the early morning on the deck…. pouring over his Bible. 

The very Bible his father carried through college now rests open in the hands of his son. And once again, God’s goodness is writing another story in its margins.