~Object 41~ The Bible

She had been neglecting it.  It wasn't that she didn't want to take the time to study the Word...but then again, maybe it was.  If she really wanted to, she would just do it, and not say she wished she had.  As it was she would wake up in the morning and need to get up right away so that she wouldn't fall asleep.  Then she would need to eat right away so that she wouldn't pass out.  And then she would need to do something right away so that she would feel useful.

Grand excuses.

"I'll make sure I read it tonight."  She would tell herself, knowing that it probably wouldn't happen.

She would get in bed each night entirely exhausted and fall asleep right away...her Bible sitting, collecting dust, on her shelf.

After weeks of this, with three or four chapters of Proverbs mixed in occasionally, she started feeling dry, hungry, thirsty, in need of something.

Josh died and she realized what it was she had been hungering for.  She dug into the Word like she had never done before.  She read chapter after chapter after Psalm after Psalm, relishing each word like it was manna from heaven.

Each verse took on new meaning.  Each verse carried more weight.  She started realizing how much she had been missing out during those weeks -sometimes months- of sporadic reading.  How could she have taken the Word so for granted that she left it sitting on a shelf?  She realized that she had been so hungry and so thirsty, yet had pushed food and water away, saying she didn't have time.

She heard a story once of a missionary who was burned alive in his home, for owning a Bible.  Afterward one of the men who had helped in the burning found the remains of a Bible in the house.  He took the pages that were still readable and read them.  God planted seeds in his life and entirely changed the man.  In order to preserve the precious pages he pasted them to his walls.  He treasured the Word as it ought to be treasured.

She had been blessed with Bibles in every room of her house, and they sat there while she busied herself with a, "full schedule."

And now here she is, ashamed to be writing this, but knowing she should.

Source

Source

Over and out,

~Emily

P.S.  My favorite book of the Bible is constantly changing, but currently it is Habakkuk.