How Many Do You Have?

I was cleaning up my office today and realized that I have a ton of Bibles (pictured are some of my Bibles, there are two shelves full of Bibles not pictured!).

How many Bibles do you have in your home?

While in Mexico filming a video about Bible translation (see below) we met a women who came to church and didn't bring a Bible. She didn't leave it at home, and it wasn't that she didn't care. She didn't have her Bible because there wasn't one in her language.

It is alarming to realize that with so many Bibles on our shelves there are people in the world today without any scripture in their language. When I ask students in America how often they read the Bible they shamefully admit they don't read it much. In fact, the students who come to my house on Wednesday night for Bible study rarely bring one of their many Bibles with them.

Take a look at your church's lost and found. What will the number one item there be found? Probably Bibles!

I'm not trying to lay a guilt trip on you (ok ... maybe a little one), but there are 2,251 languages in the world today that need a translation because none exist. Those languages represent hundreds of millions of people! Clearly, we have been blessed to have God's word, but what use is it if we don't put it to use?

Think about the amazing gift of scripture. Reminds me of Psalm 199:97-100

Oh, how I love your law!
I meditate on it all day long.

Your commands make me wiser than my enemies,
for they are ever with me.

I have more insight than all my teachers,
for I meditate on your statutes.

I have more understanding than the elders,
for I obey your precepts.

Last week Wes Peterson and I were in Orlando for a conference and drove by the Crown Plaza hotel where we had once discussed Bible translation. We realized that it had been three years ago that God birthed a vision to connect students to Bible translation through a program we helped launch called One Verse. Go check out their website, you can help sponsor verses of scripture so they can be translated into the languages of people who don't have them. A pretty cool way to change the world! (see the video below of some students in the UK doing just that!) Wycliffe's The Seed Company facilitates the sophisticated partnerships it takes to accomplish a Bible's translation.

So where is your Bible? Have you read it today? For half hundreds of millions of people, they don't even have one to read. Think about that.

Mark

PS. Here are some videos we made in Mexico and England about OneVerse when it launched in 2006. Students at PlanetWisdom have helped partner with Bible translators from Mexico and others to complete much of the New Testament for a language group in Mexico. Good work everyone!