My Bible is heavy. It’s bulky and has a hard cover that could probably do some serious damage if thrown with enough force. It’s difficult to pack because it’s thick and the pages are easily creased. The edges are worn and the spine is barely held together by several layers of duct tape. I’ve spilled water and tea and Milo on its pages, it’s been shoved into bags, tossed around, dropped on the floor and forgotten about in church pews and classrooms.
My Bible was a Christmas gift from my cousins in 2006. Next year it will be 10 years old. A whole decade worth of learning and studying, a decade worth of tears that have fallen on its pages, a decade of highlighting and underlining and re-highlighting many of same verses. I love my Bible. I love that it has notes from almost the past 10 years of my life, that it has reminded me of who I am and more importantly reminded me who God is.
And yet, I still took it for granted.
During our month in Romania, we were partnered with Hope Church in Draganesti, a small town in the south of the country. Our team helped the church with one of its New Testament Project. Hope Church partners with Gideons International to provide and distribute Bibles free of charge to every home in several remote villages in Dolj and Olt counties. We developed a beginners reading plan that we inserted into the Bibles and contact information for any follow-up questions or concerns.
We walked through villages that took us hours to get to, on dusty roads surrounded by countryside. The first time we did the New Testament project we met a woman named Adriana. She was a little shy at first and asked if the Bible was free or if we were selling it. Once we told her it was free she broke down into tears and began to express her deep gratitude to us. She was so encouraged to be receiving a Bible because her son had just had nose surgery and was still in recovery. We prayed for her and we prayed for her son. How many times have I taken it for granted that when I need encouragement or comfort, I can just pull out my Bible and read truth?
Seeing the gratitude in other’s faces reminds me how lucky I am that I am free to carry around my Bible and that I am free to worship God openly, I would not be so lucky if I were in China or North Korea. Romania has reminded me to be thankful that so many of my days begin and end with my beat up, heavy, duct-taped Bible. I am still learning new truths from many of the same verses and I am amazed that those words on the page speak into the deepest depths of my heart.
So what is the Bible to you? Maybe just another religious texts filled with myths and legends, maybe just a list of do’s and don’ts, maybe a work of literature, maybe a historical text or maybe the living word of God? The historical validity of the Bible fascinates me and I am still in awe of the fact that the Dead Sea Scrolls were once on exhibit in the Duke Chapel (sadly, this happened many years before I was a student there). It is the most published book of all time and I’m honoured to be a tiny cog in the process between publishing and delivery.
