What does your Bible say about you? Your copy of the Bible—the physical book that you carry (or don’t).

            A few weeks ago I was standing in conversation with a man who summons a great deal of respect from those of us who know him. Somehow, our conversation drifted to the worn condition of our Bibles, and this man related that another person in his family had said that he wanted his Bible when he died. He shared this story with me and how that the remark had caused him to think much more highly of this family member as a result. Rightfully so. They say that the eyes are the windows of the soul, but I say that we can know a great deal about someone by examining his Bible. This man’s family member obviously attached great practical and emotional value to the copy of the Bible that had been well used by a man of such honor.

            A few days later, the realization burned in my brain that, when one agrees to write an article, he by necessity must choose something to write about. I was thumbing through Bibles and Biblical material on the shelves in my office; for some reason, I picked up my old Bible—the one that my parents gave to me when I was about to graduate from high school; the one that I used all through college; the one my wife and I carried for years after we married; the one that we no longer carry because its cover is in shreds and pages are threatening to fall to the floor whenever it is picked up. On that day though, I picked it up anyway. I saw the cover tattered from runs from the car to the church building in the rain, visits to the dusty roof of the car while I struggled to get the screaming baby strapped into that stubborn car seat, and, hopefully, more than a few hours of contact with my hands and a tabletop while I studied for a sermon or Bible class or read during lonely hours in search of comfort. I also looked inside its covers. There, between its random pages, like so many of us who use our Bibles as short-term filing cabinets, I had stuck pieces of paper that now chronicled days of my past and brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. There was the laminated obituary for my mother from the July 14, 1978, Sherman (Texas) Democrat. There was the order of worship mailed to our condominium in Arcadia, California, informing me of my assigned role of reading the communion Scripture, Luke 24:38-49, on August 10, 1986. There was a copy of the 1986 budget from a church in Mesquite, and a copy of names and addresses for the “young marrieds” of that congregation. There were names of people once young with me, now old; people once in their prime, now gone; a young minister, once inspiring, kind, and loving, now having left the church; people I was once close to, now forgotten; that screaming baby, now twenty-one.

            Then, for some reason, I picked up a copy of the Bible that had belonged to another man. It had the words neatly printed with fountain pen inside, “Presented December 25, 1952, by Beacon Class”—no doubt printed by some hopeful and well-meaning member of the now non-existent Savoy (Texas) Methodist Church. It was printed for this man during one of his several spasmodic runs of church attendance that occurred mostly before I was born but continued at least a time or two during my childhood. That Bible, although older than I am (and I with my cover badly worn) is in remarkably good shape. Its few tears are neatly mended with now golden-brown cellophane tape. That Bible belonged to a good man in many ways—but not a Christian. He was a man who, when little more than a scared farm boy, was forced to leave his bride of a few months to go thousands of miles from home to fight in WWII; a man with very little education who worked very hard to see that his kids had more than he ever had; the man who I become more like with every passing year, like it or not; the man who gave me life but who died alone almost a year ago with no heritage of faith to give me. That Bible, neat and clean, although musty with the strong smell of tobacco smoke, spoke almost nothing about its use. Its pages were mostly free of handwritten notes and leftovers from Bible classes. Its owner, ever respectful of the dead and grieving, did have inside, stuck between chapters nine and ten of Hebrews, handwritten directions to Coker-Matthews Funeral Home.

            What does your Bible say about you?