Reflections: Thankful for God’s Word

At my house, sorting/organizing books is an ongoing project. I have piles of books: Current nonfiction topics; Bible study guides that I was inspired to buy and hope to actually use; classics I want to revisit (or actually read, if I only read the assigned excerpt in college); books I’ve been gifted at special events; early-edition thrift shop finds and more. 

Wandering around different rooms recently, hoping to devise a plan that doesn’t involve buying too much furniture or adding a room, I realized that one of my most-treasured collections is my stacks of Bibles. 

As the youngest cousin in my generation on both sides of my family, I’ve ended up with some pretty amazing copies of the Scriptures. For example, there’s my great-grandfather’s family Bible, dating to the 1860s. Great-Grandpa Bob apparently took his Bible study seriously, as the edition contains helpful sections like a pronunciation dictionary for Hebrew-derived proper nouns and a large concordance, plus pages of gorgeous art and a few practicalities such as the “Family Temperance Pledge.” 

My stack also includes over a dozen well-worn Bibles from my parents—one that helped sustain my mother’s faith as she battled the brain tumor that took her from us; our family Bible that my dad read aloud from every night during my childhood years; and several personal Bibles from my dad and stepmother. 

Although I hope to read and benefit from all of my stacks of books, those Bibles particularly speak to me. What am I doing with them? At the Voice of the Martyrs conference last fall, I met or heard about faithful Christians from restricted nations who were thankful to have just one copy of God’s Word—and I have stacks of them? Even for my rural Ozarks relatives, acquiring a nice Bible was a rare splurge on a trip to town, but some of those precious folks in other countries walked for days to a secret meeting place to get theirs. Others have been punished for having a copy, or forced to watch their church building be ransacked and Bibles burned. 

I’m fortunate to have Bibles with study notes, a smaller Bible for travel, a Bible with some of the original Hebrew and more. Literally almost any direction I look in my living room or family room, I see a Bible—that can be a reminder to pray for those restricted believers and donate financially toward helping get copies, either print or online, into their hands. 

The Bibles also remind me to study (2 Timothy 2:15). Grandpa Bob wrote notes on now-fragile scraps of paper tucked in his Bible; my parents made notes in the margins or filled entire notepads. Those notes often inspire me to think more deeply about a verse or topic. Some pages in those Bibles are yellowed and torn, a reminder that, long before machines made chores easier and electricity facilitated evening reading, people valued their time in the Word. 

And I’m reminded to be thankful: For the faith of my parents and grandparents. For an education so I can study. I’ve recently read excellent commentary on how language is a reminder that we are created in the image of God. John’s Gospel refers to Jesus as the Living Word of God, present in Creation and sent to reveal the nature of God to humanity. I’m thankful that, just as God wrote the Ten Commandments into the stone tablets, He continues to write his Name on our hearts as we seek him and study the inspired Scriptures.