On the way home from a quick supermarket run after dropping my first kindergartener off at his first day of school (man did I cry! Such a wusse!), I was listening to Bott Radio. The speaker for the program was Woodrow Kroll and he asked a great question! What are you going to say to the Lord God Almighty when you appear before His judgement seat and He asks:
Have you read the only book I ever wrote?
Or are you going to say this or something like it?:
Well, you know, God, I don't read.
I have a bible, but it's so hard to get into.
You wrote a really boring book!
God, it's just SO LONG!
You know I learned to read in kindergarten and am now above 80 but I still didn't have the time. (that was an option Mr. Kroll offered) I mean if I have just lived a little bit longer...
Now you and I both know how lame this sounds, but I know that in our culture today it is totally "uncool" to be well read. Bible illiteracy is at an all time high, and we aren't one of the thousands of people groups without a Bible in our own language. What are we doing? We have the bible or have had the bible since 1610 or thereabouts and still we fail to read the only written account of the faith we claim to hold? SHAMEFULL!! And I am not trying to be harsh, it's TRUE and You know it!! But my intention isn't to guilt you into it, I am not the holy spirit, but I wanted to give you a little perspective on what we have and absolutely distain the importance of.
We have a Bible in our own language.
Here are some statistics from Wycliff Bible Translators.
6,909 ...the number of languages spoken in the world today
2,393 ...the number of languages without any of the Bible, but with a possible need of a Bible translation to begin.
According to WBT that means over 200,000,000 people still DON'T have a bible they can read in their own language. I hope that makes you look at the bible you own in a different light.
What others gave for you to have a bible.
Wycliff had the first hand written copy of the bible. Imagine hand writing the bible for the express reason of letting you and me read it. Or William Tyndale who spent his entire career translating and printing the bible into english "so every plow man would have the benfit of reading the bible in their own language." Aren't we the target audience and he was burned alive for you to read what you have. Here is the Link to a great timeline that documents the entire history of the Bible in English. Just imagine what it meant to those men and women who went through so much to read and learn their bibles.
In the face of a sad bible knowledge can't we decided that no matter how long it takes (and trust me leviticus is very hard to get through!) or how hard it is, we MUST read our WHOLE bibles! We are without excuse! Those of you who are parents know what happens to the child who is without excuse. I plead with you to read your bibles! Read them and profit thereby!
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