GailAnn, an amazing lady in my church and her husband, are on a mission. It is a quiet, beautiful mission to make sure that all the children in our church have Bibles of their own. She handed out four Bibles yesterday morning. She’d given these children “Bible story books” at another time, but explained that they were now ready for a full Bible. So she called them up and gave them one. While they were still standing up front, holding their new books, Gailann spoke to them about the need to read them and encouraged the children to bring their Bibles to church each week. Then, she looked out in the congregation and asked the young people (and there are a lot of young people in our church!) to hold their Bibles up to show they’d brought them. Hands with Bibles went up all over the room.
That started me looking around a little. Miss Veronica, who is an older lady I was sitting next to, had her Bible. It has a brown leather cover that is seriously worn at the edges. It has notes and papers sticking out of the pages. That book has been through a lot. The gentleman in front of me had a spiffy looking Bible cover on his. I peeked over his shoulder during the sermon, and the book inside is far from spiffy, its pages ragged and bent. All around me the story was the same, the older and more wrinkly the hand that held it, the more crinkles and creases on the pages.
What is even more important, though, isn’t the number of well worn, well-loved Bibles that show up with their owners each week. It is this: the people at my church have the verses written in their heads and on their hearts as well as on the pages. The proof of that is clear in two ways. One, it doesn’t matter if it is during the sermon, or any other time during church, if the speaker starts quoting a Bible verse, voices from around the room join within just a few words, to finish it. They have verses memorized – and I don’t mean just the ‘famous’ ones like John 3:16. I’m talking verses from I Samuel and the hard parts of Ephesians or Hosea. When I was a child, I did my duty to memorize verses for Sunday School so that I could get a trinket or piece of candy. Then I’d promptly forget it. The adults I sit with each Sunday haven’t forgotten. Proof two is even more telling. This church has taken the Bible seriously. They own it. It’s clear they are trying to live out what is written on the pages. I see a lot of generosity, a lot of faith, a lot of thankfulness.
I am guessing that in any spirit-filled church there are many members who can quote the Bible and who could finish a verse once the pastor begins it. Probably, people in many pews finish the verses with the pastor quietly or in their minds. {I can also imagine a church (I am truly only imagining this!) where members speak out loudly to finish verses to prove how knowledgeable and pious they are. That certainly would kill the buzz.} But for me, in this place and with this congregation, finishing the verse is a witness. It’s a witness to me as an adult and it is a witness to those little ones who got their first Bible yesterday morning. Having your Bible in your hand, wearing it out as you journey through this world, having the verses on your mind and lips, those actions are a given. Those actions are part of what a person does to survive and triumph.
