The Bible

A few weeks ago our Pastor Jason played this video for us as we started a series looking deeper at the Bible.

My first thought when the video started was that it looked remarkably like what you see in our country on Black Friday. These people obviously longed to have whatever was in those suitcases.

Then I realized that they were diving into this pile for Bibles in their language.

It made me realize just how much we as Western Christians take for granted having Bibles around. In fact I have a whole shelf of Bibles that I’ve collected over the years. But I can’t tell you the last time I actually opened one of them.

Part of this has to do with now having the Bible App on my phone and so I have the Bible with me every where I go.

But still, I’ve got a shelf full of Bibles that are just collecting dust, and there are people who would die to have just one in their language to read.

It also brought to mind a story for a few years back when I worked at Borders in Kansas.

A young man and woman walked up to me and asked politely if we had the Koran.

So I took them over to the religion section and showed him where the few that we kept in stock were.

I was amazed at what he did next.

He pulled one off the shelf and quietly said a prayer and kiss the cover of the Koran.

I stood there shocked for a moment, then after making sure he didn’t need more help I went back to whatever I was doing.

But I kept going over what I had just seen in my mind.

This man said a prayer and kiss the Koran before even opening it.

I don’t know that I’ve ever shown that kind of reverence towards the Bible.

It hurt me to think of this, because when I see how much others care about the Bible or the Koran, it just brings to light how little respect I show to the gift that God has given me.

Like most times I don’t really have any answers or ways to make this better.

But maybe now instead of just pulling the Bible up on my phone, I’ll actually take one off the shelf. Dust it off. Say a prayer that God would speak to me through His words. Open it up and read it.