Daily Verse | Nehemiah 9:17
“But you are a forgiving God, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”
Wednesday’s Reading: Nehemiah 11-13
Wednesday and a bit of rabbit trail this morning. Usually, I’m posting my latest take on Brandon and the nutters in Washington who are driving this country off a cliff while listening to Beyonce’s Formation. Not today.
I believe that politics is downstream from culture, and culture is downstream from faith. Our faith individually and collectively reflects our spiritual life, and our spiritual life reflects, to some degree or another, our interaction with scripture.
One of my kids is on a focused search for her ‘forever’ Bible, one that she can get now and use for a lifetime. We’ve talked a lot about what translation to use, what kind of features she’d like, and what ‘trim level’, (i.e. quality) she’d like to have.
As we’ve been researching Bibles, it amazes me what’s available. According to this 2006 story in The New Yorker magazine,
[T]here are distinctions within each category. There are study Bibles that focus on theology, on historical context, or on practical applications of Biblical teachings. There are devotional Bibles for new believers, couples, brides, and cowboys. On an airplane recently, I saw a woman reading a surfers’ Bible very similar to the proposed skaters’ one. The variety is seemingly limitless. Nelson Bible Group’s 2006 catalogue lists more than a hundred titles.
They also write, “The familiar observation that the Bible is the best-selling book of all time obscures a more startling fact: the Bible is the best-selling book of the year, every year.” Estimates of Bibles currently in print worldwide are between 5 and 6 billion.
We’ve initially settled on a leather-bound New International Version (NIV), wide margins, Jesus’ words in red text, cross-references, and a concordance. It’s similar to my everyday bible, which is a Zondervan NIV Wide Margin Bible, published in 2001 with the 1984 text. I had it rebound after the cover and spine began to fall apart. I write, underline and highlight in my bible, so it was important to me to keep it and extend its life.
Coincidentally, I’m putting together a ‘Bible Basics for Beginners’ course for my church this fall and one of the topics we’ll cover is “How to Choose a Bible.” There are so many variations and features to choose from that I’m thinking of creating a matrix that would help someone figure out what’s important to them and what Bibles meet their criteria.
All of this leads me to wonder what kind of Bible you read and why. If you’re so inclined, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. What version do you use and why? What format do you use? What features are important to you? Why did you choose the Bible you use?
