Day 88 - Bibles (Give ... to Papua New Guinea)

Storly got onto a track during Sunday School today where he started asking about folks within our class who have connections to some sort of charity work or missions - places that have needs of one sort or another.  (This is all in the context of our study of "The Hole in Our Gospel".)  One of the couples have a daughter and son-in-law (and grandkids) on the mission field with Wycliffe in Papua New Guinea.  Apparently, there is a need there for English translations of the Bible and there is an effort underway in our church to collect a thousand Bibles to send.

I immediately thought this would be a tailor-made Give.  I have collected a fair share of Bible over the years.  This afternoon I took some time to gather together some Bibles and realized I had even more than I had thought!

Look at this stack:

That's fourteen Bibles.  Fourteen!

There's the J.B. Phillips translation of the New Testament (given to me by evil pastor Gjerde), God's Game Plan FCA Student Bible, two copies of the Serendipity New Testament for Groups, a copy of The Message Old Testament Wisdom Books, The Message Bible, one New International Version (which I got at the Urbana Missions Conference in 1987), a New American Standard Version, and the Young Reader's Bible presented to me on August 28, 1977 by my home church.

I've got to keep one or two (or three), but the others tend to gather dust.  I'll definitely keep the top orange Bible.  It's compact and has a durable cover.  There's another one in there I'd like to keep: a Greek/English interlinear version of the New Testament.  And maybe one of the study Bibles - the Ryrie Study Bible is very helpful at times and I also like my study Bible with the Wesleyan slant.

To me, this stack of Bibles represents just one more example of how blessed we are with resources that many Christians around the world could only dream of.  And what do we do with God's blessings?  We allow them to sit on our shelves and gather dust.

Not these Bibles... they're headed overseas. 

If you have an extra Bible or two around your house, get ahold of me and we'll make sure they get included in the shipment. 

P.S. Found three more Bibles in the house - Melissa's leatherbound Bible, and Caleb's, and a big honking King James version we got as a gift when we got married.  That's 17 Bibles in our house. 

Wait.  One more.  Just remembered I have a Bible that belonged to my grandmother, Lucile Henke.  She was Lucile Linville when the Bible was presented to her by her church on April 3, 1927.  I'll be keeping that one, too. Or passing it on to one of my brothers.

That's 18 Bibles under our roof.  That's crazy.

Oh yeah ... I have at least one more Bible I keep on my shelf at school.  19.  That's over three Bibles per family member...