A little Digression

These shelves contain some of the Bibles in my library.  Nearly all of them have a story, and I can tell you what was going on in my life when I received or purchased them, or when I was reading and studying a lot from them.  Some belong to my father and mother, a couple are even older than that.  I remember my father studying daily from his Swedish Bible that had belonged to his father, and from the new one that I purchased from him a few years before he died, from the Bible Society.  Every journey through the Bible that you make takes place in the context of your life journey.  I rode the train to the University of Illinois in Chicago and studied from one of the JB Phillips New Testaments.  My grandmother gave me the Christmas before I started Kindergarten the small blue Bible with the taped back spine.  (It fell off while I was on a camping trip with my high school youth group on Isle Royale in Lake Superior.)  Another Bible has a spine that I taped back on after it had fallen off.  I'd used it all during seminary, and it suffered from being carried around amongst a satchel full of heavy textbooks.  I was so proud of my repair job, until I noticed I'd taped it upside down!    There are two identical red volumes that my bishop presented to me when I was ordained deacon and priest.   There is the New English Bible with the Apocrypha that I bought with hard-earned babysitting money when it was first published.  There's the RSV that my sister and I bought my dad for Father's day one year.  He liked it so well that he saved it and it's almost never been read from--kind of how my mother, in the 61 years after her marriage to my father,  never even unboxed the Haviland china she'd received for her wedding.  There's the Bible the kids and Wayne gave me for Christmas one year, and the one I was required to purchase for use during 4th grade at the Lutheran elementary school I attended.   There are many more; you get the idea.   I hope that as you read and ponder the pages of your Bible(s), you will be nourished for your life's journey.  You may even be reading online.  There are several wonderful online Bible sites.  But whatever the outside of your Bible looks like, get to know its contents and its contexts.  I wish you great joy in your reading!