The bible I ordered arrived in the mail today! I flipped through it, read the introduction, and everything is pretty much as I expected to find it. There are brightly colored maps, lists and mini-bios of important people (both biblical and non-biblical for those who get mentioned in the notes), suggestions on how best to read each book, even different techniques to reading the bible itself. It breaks it down into three different commitment levels of reading: a few category based two week stints, a six month general overview that hits every book, and a three year plan for every word... Three years? Wow. I'm not sure I knew exactly what I was getting into here, but now that I'm here I might as well keep on going. Right? Granted, I won't actually be following their suggested way of reading as it jumps around quite a bit, and will most likely be reading more than one chapter at a time. So everything is in order, except for one small thing. Other than investigating added in discussion questions, I'm going to also be primarily using a different bible.
It belonged to my mother. I use the past tense because she's in the late stages of early onset dementia, specifically Frontotemporal Dementia. I have a matched set of baggage to go along with that; believe me. Her bible came into my possession today as well. My older sister went to visit her today, knowing about this undertaking, and pawed through the bibles she used in seminary, ministry, and personal study. My sister said she wanted to bring home about six different bibles, but settled on one. The HarperCollins Study Bible (a link will be added for those interested in this version as well). She said that it was my mother's favorite. That it was her all-inclusive, if she could only ever have one book to use forever and ever this would be it, version. She had two. One with all of her own notes and thoughts and connections... and one just with her first name written inside the front cover. The latter will now become filled with all of my notes, thoughts, and connections. I think she'd like that.
So starting Monday regular posts will begin "in the beginning..." Unless, you know, tomorrow's sermon/liturgy begs further discussion.
<3 Agnostic in the Pews
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