Dust on the Bible

I remember growing up with one Bible.  It was black and had a zipper that went around its outer edges.  Inside the words of Jesus were in red print and every now and again was a picture of some great Biblical moment such as David slaying Goliath. Later on I inherited a small brown Gideon Bible my father carried with him to the Pacific during World War II.  Some years after his death, my Mother married a Methodist preacher who gave me the modern rendering of the Word known as the Phillips translation.  It was the Bible I carried with me to college and it served me for a long time in those early believer days.

 

Much later the Bibles starting piling up around me.  It seemed appropriate for a someone who aspired to be a good preacher to have different versions and translations in order to better understand what the Word was saying.  I even picked up a Greek Bible along the way.   There was a time I could read some from it, but that time was long ago.  As the years and decades passed I found myself still surrounded by different Bibles; however, the New Revised Standard Bible became my mainstay.

 

Of course, the important thing about a Bible is reading it.  Having a lot of different ones may impress some folks if impressing folks is the name of the game being played.  When I was growing up there was a song going around which had the line, "Get that dust off the Bible and redeem your poor soul."  An unused Bible is a waste.  The  Bible was not written to become the basis for a collection, or even the object of intensive study.  The Bible came into existence for us to read to the point that its truths were reflected spontaneously in our living.  So, read the Word.  And, then, read the Word some more.