I opened the Bible and SURPRISE !

May 14.  In 1961 it was a Saturday.  Since I had received Christ, I had suddenly found a new and inexplicable interest in the Bible.  Since it was a Saturday, I had a little free time.

I hunted around my room until I found the Bible my Grandma Miller had given me for Christmas when I was about 10.  It was still stiff and unused, still in the box it came in.  I'm sure I politely thanked Grandma for it along with my other gifts, but I remember that I felt disappointed when I got it.  What would I do with a Bible?  I hadn't yet begun active disbelief.  I just wasn't interested.  So I put it away in its box and never opened it again until I was 15.  May 14, 1961.

I began first by trying to find the verse I had memorized as a child in Vacation Bible School.  As I underlined those to make them easy to find again, I noticed other verses around them that seemed just as significant.  I underlined those, too.  Underlining became a habit as I continued reading the Bible with spiritual eyes freshly made alive in Christ.  It took about one year before almost the whole Bible was underlined.  Funny how one day it was all so irrelevant and the next it all became so very important.

Our family's attitude toward the Bible was kind of strange.  My mother was horrified if anyone ever set any book on top of the Bible.  So somewhere there was a certain kind of respect for the Bible.  However, I never recall anyone in the family ever reading it, LEAST OF ALL, ME!  That all changed when I received Christ.

I am sad and ashamed to say that I have not always followed all that I read, and sometimes I have messed up pretty badly.  It's still true, though, that the Bible came alive for me the moment I received Christ.  It's as if blinders were taken off my eyes, and before me was a royal banquet table filled with all varieties of delicious food and set with the most beautiful flowers in the world.  I've been reading and studying the Bible for 51 years now, and I still marvel at its depth, its beauty and its significance. 

When someone tells me the Bible is boring or outdated, I always wonder if they have truly met the author, or if, like me in my unconverted days, they only learned to recite facts about Him.  I always encourage them to actively seek God, because that most exciting of books assures me that those who seek God will always find Him.  Or sometimes, like me, like Saul of Tarsus, like Matthew the tax collector, God will find them when they are not even seeking for Him.  That is because He seeks for us.  I love the Bible, and I first began to read it 51years ago today.