By Tony Martin
Editor
Margurette Robison, 88, lives in the Macedonia community near Tupelo in Lee County. Her two daughters, Vanita Billingsley and Sherry Smith, live close by. What makes Robison’s story unique is how she has spent the past three-and-a-half years hand-copying the entire Bible word-for-word. She completed her task on Jan. 14.
“I read the newspaper every morning,” said Robison. “Our Tupelo Daily Journal. I saw who it was catering to. It says it’s for ‘God and mankind,’ but they catered to the other section. One day it had an advertisement about a gay parade on Ninth Street in Tupelo, and I decided then that I didn’t need that paper anymore.”
Robison had always enjoyed reading the paper first thing in the morning, but she decided she could find something better to do.
“I’d just heard David Jeremiah say to copy the book of Romans,” said Robinson. “So I did that, and it was good. Then he said he’d copied the whole Bible, and I said, ‘Well, I’ll start this. I’ll go back, pick up the Gospels, and go through the New Testament. If I don’t get any farther than that, that’s good.’”
Robison considers herself an early riser.
“There’s no one to have a conversation with at 5:30 or 6 in the morning,” said Robinson. “That was a good time for me to write. So I got started with that, and when I finished the New Testament, I started on the Old. That was exactly three-and-a-half years ago.”
Robison wrote until she got tired, which could mean copying one page of scripture, perhaps two. She estimates she averaged one-and-a-half pages a day.
“It started as a selfish thing to do,” said Robinson. “I just wanted something to spend some time on. But when I got started, it was a different story.”
According to Robison, there were several benefits to taking on this project.
“The Bible is a very convicting book,” said Robison. “I’d memorized scripture before, but as far as knowing the background of the scripture, my daughters knew much more about it than I did. Doing this was convicting. It’s been such a blessing. It gave me something to do, and it was like having a good devotional every day. When I finished this morning, I almost cried. I thought, ‘Well, goodness, what will I do?’”
Robison said she wasn’t trying to call attention to herself but believes others could benefit from the practice.
“It’s God’s holy word,” she said. “It’s God speaking to you through scripture. It’s not that I did it for that purpose at the time — it was just a time filler. Once I got started, it was very convicting, and I couldn’t stop.”
Only a handful of people knew what Robison was doing.
“She was honored at church [Macedonia],” said her daughter Vanita Billingsley. “She still plays the piano and organ there. They did a special honor for her last year. Sherry’s son read just a little bit of something from the family, and in it, he mentioned she was writing the scripture.
“I don’t think people grasped or heard the whole thing,” said Billingsley. “But there’s a lady at our church [West Jackson Street Church in Tupelo] who was just all over it. She’ll ask me about it. I told her in one of our little lady groups about it.”
“When I started it,” said Robison, “I didn’t have any idea when I’d finish it. The more I wrote, well, I kept it up.”
“She’s kind of like the lady who buys green bananas or puts her clothes out every night for the next morning,” said Billingsley. “She’s pretty optimistic.”
“Well, I wanted to live to see the presidential election and finish my two last books,” said Robison.
“She’d say, ‘I don’t know if my hand is going to hold out,’” said Billingsley. “I told her the Lord is going to give her the ability.”
“It’s all been a reminder to me to be thankful,” said Robison. “His Word is sweeter than honey.”
Photo: Margurette Robison spent the last three-and-a-half years copying scripture, handwriting every word of the Bible into spiral-bound notebooks.
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