I got a new Bible.
Yeah, I know, “stop the presses!”
What??
Giving my age away with that one. There’re probably a lot of kids who’ve hardly ever seen a newspaper, let alone read it. They know nothing about newpaper editors coming into the press room with a hot new news item and hollering, “Stop the presses!” They’re all glued to the screen in their hands. It amazes me, the people I see, even one driving the other day, who can’t seem to tear themselves away from their latest I-toy. At least the guy driving had it up where he could watch the road and talk on the phone at the same time. Yes, yes, I know. It’s the 2010s, not the 1910s. Electronics have been revolutionary in our culture, a lot of good, the iPhones, etc., but some not so much.
Anyway….
I got a new Bible.
It’s not the first new one; it’s just when I opened this one this morning for my reading, the pages were empty. Not empty of words, of course, but of the notations, markings, underlinings, etc., which had filled the old one. The other one was an old friend, even to the duct tape holding it all together. Wonderful invention, duct tape.
It saddens me, the professing Christians who never open a Bible, never read it, who know very little of the treasures it contains. Early in our marriage, Sharon and I visited the church I had attended as a child. Aside from the fact that the auditorium seemed a lot smaller than I remembered, so far as I could see, we were the only ones among the 2 or 3 hundred people there who had Bibles. Now, of course, churches have these ginormous screens up front so people don’t actually need their own Bible. Or they’ve got these little things they can stick in their pocket. It’s today. Sad. No book to actually hold and read.
This is the Word of God. Yes, I know. A whole lot of people, among them professing Christians, don’t really believe that.
This is the Word of that God who called everything into being and who keeps it going. This is the God who has counted the innumerable stars in the heavens.
This is the God who has named every single one of them, Psalm 147:4.
And this is the God who moved a bunch of men to write down His Word, so that we may know Him and His works. Know ourselves and our sinfulness. Know the Lord Jesus Christ, how He came to this world to do for us what we could never do for ourselves: live a sinless, righteous life and die an unspeakable death, all to pay our sin debt. Thank you, Lord Jesus.
And God had it all written down so we could know it….
_______________
I got a new Bible.
Goodbye, old friend.
Hello, new friend.
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