Word of God

    This copy of the NIV Bible has very thin pages. I made the mistake of leaving it where Rose could get to it, and she showed her love of the Word of God by ripping out a couple of pages of the Psalms.  She then crumpled the pages beyond my ability to smooth and reattach them to the Bible.

  So now we have an NIV without Psalms 63-69.

 For one brief moment, I considered getting rid of that Bible -- not, I assure you, because of some feeling that it has been desecrated or theologically damaged. I just don't like books with missing pages.

 And then it occurred to me that throughout the world, there are men and women who don't have the Bible in their mother tongue at all.

And in other countries, the Bible is in the mother tongue of the people, but Bibles are impossibly expensive to obtain.

And in other countries, the Bible is a forbidden book and the government has forcibly removed them from circulation and persecuted those people caught with a Bible.

Indeed, entire congregations of Christians have been known to deliberately and carefully rip up Bibles and distribute a few pages to the members attending the church.

And here we are, with at least a dozen Bibles in our house, NOT including all the children's Bibles.

I decided to keep the Bible (which is in fine shape otherwise.)

And I'm thankful that English Bibles are readily available, and that we have copies, and that we can read the Bible.  I am very thankful.