I searched for inspiration for my piece this month and found this 2021 post titled Love Your Bible Enough to Wear it Out by Rose McCormick Brandon.

“Everyone has them – a pair of scruffy shoes that should be thrown away. Mine sit on a shelf at the back door – an ancient pair of black loafers.”

Brandon wrote how her worn loafers take on personal ridges from bending to do gardening. And she likens it to the wear on her Bible. She wrote: “A Bible should become as personal as well-worn sneakers.”

As I reflect on a song by a musical group Leap of Faith, about taking a worn dusty Bible off a shelf, I wonder how many Bibles are tucked away to become dusty, or have become so worn that the book was at risk of losing pages. Then it sits unused. (Reminds me of the aged books in the Old Quebec library held together by elastics and locked in a cabinet.)

I was part of a StoneCroft Bible study group for a number of years while my children were in school. We studied many books of the Bible, shared perspectives on passages, and prayed for people we knew.

When my husband, retired from his full-time job, was offered part-time work one morning a week for a refrigeration company, we had only one vehicle. As my meeting was near Cambridge, I had no other way to get there. I was sorry to give it up.

The version I used most in those sessions was a paperback copy of Today’s English Version. It’s well worn, and marked up in places. In fact, I made a cloth cover in those early days to protect it from all the wear of coming and going, of opening and reading, and marking passages. It hasn’t fallen apart yet, but it does have some loose pages.

In my collection, I have a copy of the New International Version (NIV) that is very thick and not conducive to carry to meetings. There’s The Message, a paraphrase version by Eugene Peterson. Also the one our Lutheran church uses, New Revised Standard Version. That one was given to me years ago for mentoring a new member. I also use that one when writing for Eternity for Today. We have in our home a couple of German versions we located recently, but I cannot read the language, so it doesn’t really count as my library.

Now I leave this question for you to consider. Is your Bible worn from use? Will it become that way from reading it, or referring to it? And if you’re an Audio reader, that’s fine too. Works when eyesight or a different form are needed .