"So It's Time To Buy A Bible"

Printed April 11, 2004

Tuesday evening, my family went to Montgomery.  While we were  there we went to one of its malls.  I soon found myself in Books-A-Million Bookstore.  As I walked down the Bible aisles seeking a new Bible, I was amazed at the selections.  I remember thinking, “Locating a Bible should not be a too difficult job.  How hard can it  be?”  I am a preacher with numerous Bibles and am very familiar with translations.  Most important was the fact that I had a particular kind of Bible, version,  binding and color in mind.

Perhaps nothing could have prepared my mind as to the task at hand than to walk to and fro as I beheld the choices.  There were Bibles big and small; tall and thin; short and fat; GIANT and small print ; Catholic and Jewish; study and life application; cross-references in center columns or no references at all; abridged dictionary and/or concordance included; ordinary Bibles and scholarly Bibles; devotional and thematic; men’s, women’s and teen’s Bibles; parallel & interlinear; “The Metal Bible,” a new choice identical to a diary where a young girl stores her memories, only without the lock and key; and on, and on!

This list is not all-inclusive nor exhaustive.  I have not even included the Bible type I was hunting—the Thompson Chain Reference Bible.  And I have not even begun to include versions (and we know how many there are), colors, or binding—all of which I was incorporating into my decision making processes.

After pacing the aisles not a few times, I finally located the Thompson Chain Reference Bible.  The alone copy was not what I had in mind and so observed the “pass-over.”