The Wisdom of Jimmy, the Presence of Rosalynn

How the famed Sunday gatherings in Plains, Georgia, became a testament to an inseparable marriage–time and again.

President Jimmy Carter, First Lady Rosalynn Carter and their daughter Amy Carter leave the First Baptist Church of the City of Washington after services on March 5, 1977. (Courtesy of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library & Museum)

One Sunday, September 20, 1998, to be exact, Jimmy Carter had nothing but time on his mind.

When the former president, who was a young 73 years old then, looked out at the congregants attending what had become his legendary Sunday School lessons at the Maranatha Baptist Church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, he quizzed them.

“What visitors can tell me what the Wisdom Books are?” he asked. It wasn’t a rhetorical question. In fact, most of the questions the 39th president of the United States asked were meant to be answered by people in his audience.

That was apparently understood as the visitors shouted out their answers to which he responded: “Very wise. Very good. I told you this was a high quality group.”

This particular lesson began with Ecclesiastes’ boo…