Hope Road

When is the luxury of owning a Bible most appreciated? As with all necessities, I think the Bible is most valued where it is most scarce. It doesn’t take a lengthy perusal of Voice of the Martys to realize that! Sometimes the Scriptures are not legal in a certain country, so they have to be smuggled in. Sometimes they aren’t illegal, but they aren’t readily available, either. And sometimes, they aren’t available at all. Wycliffe says that “more than 2,200 language communities still do not have true access to even one verse of Scripture.”

How sad is that? And while this reality should make us have hearts of eager willingness to do what we can to help those who are still without Scripture in their language, it should also fill us with gratefulness that we are blessed enough to have access to the Scriptures! It’s not a cliche to say that being able to read the Bible is a great blessing. It is, in fact, a luxury that hundreds of thousands of people would love to enjoy.

Right now, I have five Bibles in plain view - my most-used ESV Bible on my dresser, and a stack of four Bibles on my bookshelf - ESV, NIV, NLT, and another ESV. That’s not even counting several Bibles being stored elsewhere. Yet sometimes I let weeks go by without even a thought of thankfulness for my access to God’s living word.

Today was a hard day, and I felt my need for the Scriptures, which is what made me think about all of this. But isn’t every day a day of deep need for the Scriptures, whether it is felt or not? Shouldn’t every day also be a day of deep thankfulness for the Scriptures?

I hope I can learn to let myself be characterized by that gratitude.

Filed under: Christianity, Personal Reflection, Scripture on June 22nd, 2007