I remember years ago I chanced upon this particular story. It was titled “What’s Inside Your Bible?”. So inside the story was a little boy who was asked by his Sunday School teacher about, well, what’s inside your bible. The answer should have been obvious. Words of GOD. Or perhaps rather 66 books of scriptures (with 1189 chapters and 31101 verses in King James version. I’m pretty sure the Indonesian version has loads more than that). The boy answered “There’s my Mom’s shopping list, a picture of my sister’s boyfriend, Dad’s stuff, Grandma’s stuff” (can’t remember what the other stuff was).

As I’m going through my stuff to pack them up (I’m going to move out in a week), I found my bible. Somebody (I think it was one of my parents – Dad or Mom, I’m not sure. It could have been my then already-Catholic uncles too) bought me this Bible on February 12th 2000 (yes I wrote it in the Bible along with my name, my address, and my phone number). As per Catholic tradition, the Bible was supposed to be blessed by a priest. To anticipate that the 11-year-old me wrote “Date of blessing:” just below the “Date given:”. To cut my “lost period” stories short, I never got the bible blessed.

When I was in junior high school too, there were always daily bible and reflection readings everyday. It was a Christian school so yeah. Students took turns everyday. Everyday there would be a group of students that are responsible for that day’s daily tasks, including cleaning up the whiteboard and the readings. One student will do the opening prayer, one student will read the bible, one student will read the reflection (we read Saat Teduh, Indonesian version of The Upper Room), then one student will do the closing prayer.

Everyday, there would always be one highlighted verse of the Bible. Each day, for about 2 or 3 years (I think I stopped after a while but I can’t remember), I would highlight those verses in my Bible. As the result, the pages of my Bible now are gleaming in different shades : blue, pink, yellow, orange, etc. depends on what colour of the highlighter I owned at that time (or the highlighter I borrowed from a friend).

I attempted to read the Bible from front to back once but failed. I think I stopped at Genesis 27. Really low motivation that time, I guess. As I was reading, I highlighted a lot of verses along the way too.

Not only highlighted verses, I also found a lot of bookmarks. Bookmarks that were given to me in Sunday School, a bookmark that I made myself at an arts and crafts class (I guess), and some handmade bookmarks I made from scrap papers – containing mostly mushy messages about my love for my boyfriend that time.

My point -and the story’s point is : a Bible is not only a book containing words by GOD or a collection of 66 scriptures. It’s a part of your life. Too often a bible is seen as the holy book, decorated nicely and left untouched. Or it is only used at special events. What good can unheard words of GOD do to you then?

Take your Bible and make it yours. 

So what’s inside your Bible? (Or Koran, Tripitaka, Weda, etc.?)

Photo by nyello8 available under CC BY License

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Well, she didn’t exactly tell me directly since I only saw her wall-to-wall on Facebook with somebody else. To be honest, I’m really disappointed. Not only she’s so unknowledgeable that she doesn’t know that Barack Obama is indeed not a Moslem, but also to be sooooo.. erm.. discriminative?

I’m like, eeks. And since I saw it, it’s just been bugging me. Like seriously. Why can’t a moslem become a president? Because they fast once a year? Because they do prayers 5 times a day? Because they have annual animal slaughtering?

Indonesia’s presidents are all Moslems as long as I know. Or is it why she decided to go abroad and study at a missionary college (yes you saw it right)? Because she can’t stand a country with a Moslem as the president?

Geez. Unbelievable.
Oh and her “religion views” on Facebook : “I love Jesus, but I don’t do religion”
Yeah, right.

I’m so not impressed.

Disclaimer : I’m a christian. Catholic, if you may say.

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