For Your Children's Children.
About 14 years ago I was at my dad's house and I decided I wanted to go rummaging through his attic looking for "memorabilia" from my younger years. I got up there and I found an old football helmet, alot of old photographs and scrapbooks. I also came across a few old report cards but I decided not to look at them. At the bottom of one old box I came across a thick green book that looked like a journal. It was about an inch thick and when I opened it up I could see that it was in my dad's handwriting.
I began to read and saw that it was chock full of all kinds of information. There were parts of it that were all the different ways that he loved me. Other parts were rules for living that would insure that I would grow up to be a good man. There was advice on how to be a good son, husband, father, citizen and friend. It was a great deal of material and I wanted to read it all so I took it down from the attic and took it back home so I could read every last page. It would take a while.
After I got home and got settled, I took out the journal and began to read it all the way through. There was alot more stuff in there. More great advice about how to handle money, how to control anger, how to be a man of your word, what humility looks like and kindness. But most of all, what it was about was Jesus and God. It described how Jesus is the example of all those things my dad wanted me to be. How I was going to sin because I was a sinner and that I needed to understand that God gave His Son to take the punishment for my sin if I would just believe and repent. My father wrote more about this than anything in this journal. It was obviously the thing he wanted me to know the most because he wrote so much about it. There was tons of stuff in their about Jesus. My father also really likes poetry and music, so there were several sections that was just songs and poems written about God. There was another section that was just a list of wise sayings and advice for right living.
This journal helped me to understand myself, humans and this world alot better. I also had alot of strong and differing emotions as I read. Fear, awe, love, anger, sadness but most of all, incredible gratitude to my father for writing all of this down just for me. As the journal was quite large, it took me a month or so to get through it the first time. I also realized that one reading would not be enough and since there was an incredible amount of valuable information in it, I would need to read it again. So I did. And then I did it again. I even began to try to memorize some of the most important parts. In fact, like I said, this was 14 years ago but to this day I still read this journal every day. I do it because I don't want to miss anything that my dad wants me to know and I want to be the man my dad wants me to be.
One thing I forget to tell you; When I read through this journal for the first time, I was a little angry. In many ways I had made a mess of my life by the time I found this thing. Why oh why hadn't my dad given this to me sooner. In fact, why did I have to find it myself. So I called my dad and asked him why he hadn't given it to me sooner. Well, he explained to me that he had tried to give it to me many times but I just wasn't interested. But he also explained that he knew I would eventually find it and cherish it as I do now. Ok. So I wasn't mad anymore. Just thankful.
This whole story is hogwash.
But I do have a Bible and the way I feel about it and what I have found in it is very similar to the things I wrote above. Including the part about my Father writing it.
There are 1,189 chapters in the Bible. There are 929 in the Old Testament and 260 in the New Testament. If you read only 10 chapters a day you would finish reading the Bible in only 4 months or you could read the New Testament in a little over a month and a half by reading only 5 chapters a day.
The Bible is 66 books written by nearly 50 authors over the course of nearly 1600 years.
The number of new Bibles that are sold, given away, or otherwise distributed in the USA is about 168,000 per day.
The Bible devotes some 500 verses on prayer, less than 500 verses on faith, but over 2,000 verses on money and possesions.
You should give it a shot and see for yourself what the big deal is about this book. You couldn't possibly do a more valuable thing for yourself, your children and your children's children.