My little blue NIV has finally expired. The back cover finally fell off after a few years of services. This would probably be about the 6th or 7th I've run into the ground now.
I'm not one of these compulsive underliners (for I fear that the whole thing would be underlined before too long) but instead I insert A6 slips of paper with notes on. The problem lies in the fact that after about 3 weeks there's then like 41 extra bits of paper in there. If you keep on adding notes, and moving them and then removing then, eventually the spines of the bible get old and break at the joins. Usually my bibles fail because the covers tear off at the top or bottom.
It doesn't help much that there will usually be one riding shotgun either in my satchel that goes everywhere, one will sit in the car just in case and my big parallel NIV/KJV lives slowly turning into a cheeseburger of post-it notes and other slips on the bedside table.
Legendary bibles have failed because they get used as a hammer or a pillow (go B!) but above all they serve a far more useful purpose. The text contained within those covers is precious and valuable, and wait for it, you might actually learn something about the author... God himself!
I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. - Psalm 119:11
Considering that the text contained within these bound pages is both lengthy and complex, the only defense I've found to deal with the situations where I've not had mine at the time or, invariably where the pages will fail, is to learn it, hide it, and bury it. I take a leaf from Science Court here - Learn it, Use it, Wear it out.
The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks. - Luke 6:45
I like to think of squirrels or the nutcracker who store great hoardes of nuts. Perhaps if I bury enough stuff, I can dig it up again and give away the treasure at a later date.
In the meantime, I'm still going to wear out these things... I guess they just don't build 'em like they used to.
Addenda: It also appears as though vandals have decided that the rear window of my Ka would be best served by shattering in into bits. They gave me a present of half a brick (how thoughtful) but it looks as though they were in so much of a rush to give it to me that they forgot to open the windows first.
I suspect that they may have been on a mission to liberate my iPod "Gipsy". Gipsy was well hidden away as I don't want her stolen; she wasn't going to do any wandering last night.
What really annoyed me was that my big parallel NIV/KJV was torn in half by the dirty vandals. That's just nasty.
No comments:
Post a Comment