Bible Memories

Ministers tend to collect Bibles over the years. I received a Scofield Reference Bible when I was ordained. I collected several translations while in seminary including Greek, Greek Interlinear, a Harmony of the Gospels, and Hebrew scriptures (and rarely touched after seminary).

My Bible that has the most wear and tear is a New American Standard Version (The Open Bible Edition) that I used while serving as a campus minister on three campuses.

It is a little worse for wear these days, but I have found it illuminating to look back on the passages underlined, the notes in the margins, and the “Personal Study Notes” in the back. There are several things there that reflect both what I was attempting to teach and what I was trying to learn.

One of the first things added was this quote from Francois de Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambrai (1651-1715):

“The right to be wrong in matters of religious belief must be accorded, otherwise we produce hypocrites instead of persons with an enlightened belief that is fully their own. If the truth be might and God all-powerful, His children need not fear that disaster will follow freedom of thought.”

Another significant addition was a list of scriptures dealing with the Holy Spirit. When I was growing up, either my pastors didn’t preach about that part of the Trinity, or I was not paying attention. In later years, I concluded that most of us wanted to stay about from the topic because we weren’t sure what the Spirit might be calling us to do. Letting the Spirit speak through scripture in new ways is formative in the Christian life and sometimes uncomfortable.

There are also notes about the resurrection, daily devotional time, and prayer, but what particularly caught my attention on a recent review was a list of scriptures dealing with women and their service in the church.

I think a lot of this came from working with many gifted young women and being mentored by several women (not ordained, of course). It became clear to me that my denomination was very willing to let women carry a major part of the ministry load without the recognition of that service. My advocacy for recognizing the giftedness of women in ministry emerged from these years.

My primary takeaway from this brief review of this worn copy of the Bible is that I continue to wrestle with understanding and applying scripture in my life. And that is a both a blessing and an opportunity.

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