What I Learned From A Paperback

 

Once I had a wonderful hard-backed study Bible. Roger bought it for me when I talked to my ladies group in my church about the Bible. It had wonderful scholarly   features like cross references so you could look up related verses, and footnotes of what the scholars thought the passages meant.  You could really appear smart quoting from this Bible.  

Then one day when I was talking to the ladies I accidently pushed the hard- backed Bible off the stand where I had opened it to read from it.  I was probably gesturing wildly like I do when I get really going with something.  

I broke the poor Bible’s back! Now about a third of the Bible, falls out when I open it.  Other parts of the Book are barely hanging in there. All the references from the back have to be put back in the book before it can use them. 

Then I had a paperback Bible. It has some extra features, but nothing like the fancy Bible.  My more humble Bible, the paperback one, is yellow and dog-eared and goes in and out of my purse and my back pack and my car. It has been to more than a few camping events, and has been dropped, accidently pushed off a desk, more than once.  

Yet the paperback Bible, because it is less rigid, is still going strong. It is a book I can pick up and read without stopping to piece it back together. 

The other Bible has to be held together by me before it offers me anything. 

I think I’d like to be the yellow paperback Bible. I’d like to be still offering words of hope and encouragement in my plain wrapper. I want to be still trudging along until I’m ashes to ashes. I think there might be something to adapting yourself to situations. There might be something in being flexible and not so rigid. Both books have the same good news. Yet one of them is more useful day in and day out.  

I guess I aspire to be a paperback book.  Don’t you?