My last hard Bible (part 2)

I was sitting in my favorite chair in the living room this morning when, out of the blue, there came the thought, "When is the last time you looked at your real Bible?"  

These days I use the Bible Gateway app on my IPad Mini.  I can type in notes if I want to, and there are some handy helps included with it.  I even have an app for the One-Year Bible, so I can read through the Bible in a year without dealing with the heavy paper-back book (if I remember to read it every day, which I haven't lately).  

So once that question came to mind, I assumed I was supposed to go get my real Bible and look at it.  Yes, friends and neighbors, I do believe Holy Spirit nudges us sometimes.  I came to the computer room, opened the closet, and there it was, up on the shelf where I put it when we moved back to the trailer house.  I took it to the living room, sat down, and opened it up.

Wow, I forgot that I bought that Bible in 1995 with money I was given for singing "Daddy, Carry Me" (a song I wrote) at Uncle Orville's funeral.  I think I also sang "One Day at a Time".    

There are lots of quotations written on those blank first pages, some from Nancy Blansit, a pastor's wife who was teaching Sunday School at the church I was attending.  Some from televangelist Joyce Meyer.  

It's a mess, isn't it?  Sloppy writing, every which way.  

There are certain verses marked because Rusty Douthitt preached a sermon using them.  Some are marked because at the time I read them at home, they had a particular significance to me, and I made note of that.  I saw a note in a margin that said Randy Ruiz preached on that passage:  I had to look him up on the Internet to find out he was an evangelist.  I remember nothing about the guy.  A note next to Psalm 40:3 tells me some preacher named Dan Livingston preached on that verse.    

This Bible has personality.  It speaks to me, and my notes remind me of things I once learned through my own experience, some of them lessons it wouldn't hurt me to re-learn.  I can make notes in my Bible Gateway app, but they aren't right there in plain sight, alongside the verses, where I will notice them.  

I think maybe it's time for me to start reading in my last hard Bible once in awhile, and carrying it to church.  I'll leave the Ipad in the car, after I've "checked in" on Facebook at Journey of Faith ministries.