BIBLE W1 D1 How I Love Your Law (Psalm 119:97-105)

NOTE: Today we start a new book. If you don't have a copy of "THE BIBLE: Pilgrimage Travel Guide" please get to the church office ASAP to get your copy.

We start several weeks of study about the Bible today. Our curriculum suggests that the Bible is our travel guide for our pilgrimage with God while here on earth - a sort of road map for us where we learn the rules of the road, and find hints at what we will encounter on our journey. If you think about it, the Bible is indeed where we learn about the paths other pilgrims have taken.

I have always had an interest in how the Bible came into being. Read p.13 carefully because it is one of the best (and shortest) summaries of how our Bible was written. But I'm also interested in how the collection of books and stories progressed after it was pulled together as our Bible (I've been known to drag my family to various museums or libraries to look at dusty old Bibles over the years). It's a fascinating history. Did you know that many people DIED so that you could have the right to hold the scriptures in your hands right now? (The church in the middle ages thought that scripture was too holy for a mere person to own.)

My earliest memory of the Bible was sitting with Mom - I was maybe 4 years old - while she read to me from this huge Family Bible we had (I think my sister still has this Bible). I remember that this Bible had beautiful full-page illustrations from various Renaissance masters which illustrated the bible stories and I would get myself lost in the pictures while Mom read the corresponding passages. My favorite Bible passages today are those that had illustrations in that Bible. To this day, I sometimes find myself getting confused if I'm reading a Bible passage and a detail in the writing conflicts with my memory of one of those illustrations.

Over the years, I've collected Bibles that correspond to my faith pilgrimage. In elementary school, I used the Bible that my brother left behind when he died. I have 2 copies of The Living Bible given to me by my parents and a favorite Shopkeeper/Sunday school teacher during my teen years. I have a copy of The New King James Version which my great aunt gave me when I went off to college - I read this version cover-to-cover during the summer after my freshman year. Just last week, while in Virginia, I used a travel copy of The Message which Dean gave me when the Bishop received me the other year. Finally, for most of this curriculum's study, I use a copy of the Faith in Action NIV Study Bible that I received from WorldVision for getting people to sponsor children last year.

So you can see that I have a bit of a history with the Bible, but the nice thing is I always learn something new when I sit down with it.

So what's your favorite Bible-related memory? Please share it with us.