Tia Price

During my reading time today I came across the coolest thing I’ve read about in a long time. In her book, Until We Reach Home, Lynn Austin writes about how two characters, who speak different languages, communicate with each other by using passages in the Bible. The male character (German) would right out a passage location and the female (Swedish) character would look up the passage in the Bible of her translation.

It made me think about how many topics the Bible really does cover. Just think how universal it is; how many cultures and people are bonded by its words. I don’t know my Bible well enough to communicate with someone who doesn’t speak my language but I want to now.

How many people must have known their Bibles that way? You know, before radios, TV, video games, software, and the Internet. Before great big libraries, concordances and city life. For some, the Bible might have been the only book they owned. How often did they read their Bibles and how long would it have taken them to know it enough to think of a passage and know its location immediately? All these questions and other thoughts ran through my mind.

My solution is memorization. My daughters are memorizing verses every week. I did to when I was younger and still do. My problem is that I have grown accustomed to my concordances and online Bibles. I never placed value on knowing where to find the scriptures I memorized. I know so many and yet most of them I would not be able to find without the help of the instruments mentioned above. I think I will start my new found endeavor by going back and memorizing the locations of the scriptures I know (using my special instruments of course :-))

It is a small step but one I will take to reach my ultimate goal. How well do you know your Bible?