I received the bible on the day I was baptised, back in 1986. It’s leather bound, but judging from the reddish color and the way it has aged it would be safe to assume that it’s not real leather. It’s a standard sized bible, small enough for a ten year old’s small hands but heavy, the way a book filled with lots and lots of thin pages can deceptively be. It’s not a children’s bible with fun drawings and simplified versions of old stories, but it’s not the lofty language of the King James either - it’s probably an NIV or NASB. I remember using the table of contents to memorize the books of the New Testament - a goal set forth in Sunday School with some small trinket as a prize. The trinket is long gone but somehow, through the detours of my life and faith, I’ve managed to hang on to the bible. Packed away in a box somewhere during my teens and twenties the bible hid in the dark much like my spirituality. Dark stuff indeed. But as I came back into a relationship with God the bible returned into my life once again, in pretty good shape considering. As I’ve matured I don’t fixate on objects - or as I often call them, things or stuff. Like my faith, my attachment to earthly things has lessened as I focus on the eternal. But there is something special about the object that first helped link the earthly world and the spiritual realm for me as a child. I don’t think I actually realized that this worn, old bible is the object I love the most until right now.
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