Rejoice with me. I found my Bible. Remember the parable of lost coin - Lk 15:18-19? It felt that way.I have not told you but for the last couple of months, since November '07, I was really out of kilter. I lost my NT NRSV vest pocket Bible, a Bible I have been using for more than 15 years now. Yeah, I am one of those who like this translation compared to NIV. I think the NIV is too soft for my taste. Some think the NRSV is a liberal translation, hmmm, I am skeptical of that. It is based on the RSV and ESV is built on RSV too so...I doubt if ESV is a liberal translation.
When I lost it I felt like the the woman in the parable of the lost coin. I did look around all over the house. Now I did have a strong hunch it was somewhere in the house and I have looked over the shelves, the rooms, under the bed. I did miss it and I would get depressed, because it was something so useful to me. I used that Bible for my devotions and study, and when asked to preach, it was the one I used. I did pray and told the Lord, how sad I was for losing it, it was like a friend to me. So I wonder if the woman in the parable felt grieved or mourned for her lost coin - a great lost that strikes you at the heart, you get so upset and undone. I felt like that. It was so important that I still did not stop looking and praying I might find it, and pray I did, daily. I was hurting. I was not normal (I do not know if I should use that word because others think I have always been ab-normal - I got OCD).Well, today before going to work, I was in the garage and I was picking up things from the garage floor when I happened to look up through a table as I bent up. Then, there it was, my black NT, I had to blink a couple of times, I found my friend.
There was my NT sitting on top of a thick black paper back book entitled--- Arnold Swarchenegger's Body Building Guide.
Is the Lord saying something to me here?
15 comments:
Tell you what bro I'll have one of my evangelical friends who claims to hear directly from God interpret that for you. What good is a sign if we don't know what it means?
EWWWWWW!!!! Was that too sarcastic? Surely not!
Glad you found it bro! I am not well versed enough in the various english bibles to know if it is liberal or not. In bible studies I can use an online lexicon with the best of them but when it comes to bible version debate all I get out of it is a good nap.
God's peace. †
Lito,
Now hold on to your hat but praise the Lord, we DO have something in common.
The NRSV New Testament with Psalms is exactly what I carry every day for my personal reading and study. I don't consider it a "liberal" translation either.
Who'd have thunk it :)
Dave,
Bro, please so ask if the body building book has is a sign of my needing to exercise ;-) (LOL)
The Lord has a sense of humor.
I am so relieved I found it, if you were here, I would have bought you 5 pints of your favorite something.
LPC
Christine,
I am so glad at least we got something in common though we are sitting on the opposite side of the fence ;-)
If you were here you would have received a warm and tight hug, I felt like buying cigars for everybody I met.
Yes, I have thought of this NT, I think it is by now one of the rare Bibles because they do not print this genuine leather version.
I tell you I am now max-ed out on Bible, I went to a Christian bookshop and my my my, they have all sorts of Bibles, they have one for Teenagers, for Men, for Women, then Spirit Filled then Reformation, the Healing etc, then Life Application, 25 years ago, it was not that way.
Thanks for rejoicing with me.
LPC
Lito,
Yes indeed the Christian book stores carry Bibles for just about every stripe.
And I do indeed rejoice with you --if I lost my NRSV New Testament and Psalms I would be beside myself! It's my very cherished companion.
Sending you a cyberhug in return, Grace and Peace to you!
You too Christine...
LPC
I never lost one of my "coins" -- Bibles -- but having lost other things to find them later, I understand the feeling.
My dad used to remark that you always find things in the last place you look. Think about it!
My "coin" now is the ESV Concordia Edition. When I was WELS it was the NIV, pretty much their unofficial official translation. I don't use it now.
Since the 1970s my translation has been the 1917 Jewish Publication Society Hebrew Scriptures, first as such and later as contained in the Hertz Chumash anout which I blogged. I still regularly use it. At the same time, I also use a completely different sort of translation, the original Jerusalem Bible. I am probably the only confessional Lutheran in the world whose study Bibles are Orthodox Jewish and liberal historical-critical "Catholic"!
I keep a KJV around because of its place in the English language. Finally, I have a Bible given to me when I was about eight or so by a priest I often served for, contra the popular mythology that pre-conciliar Catholics didn't read the Bible. It is a hybrid -- most of it is the then universal Challoner revision of the Douay translation, with what had been done of what was to be the New American Bible of the US RC church.
Oddly enough, I have never read the Bible in Spanish or German, though I do have a copy of the Clementine Vulgate, which I found in a Mennonite bookstore where I also bought my first copy of the LC, and a copy for a Lutheran seminarian friend who was unable to find it in his seminary bookstore (which seminary is now part of, guess who, the ELCA!)
Lito,
I do rejoice with you!
And I can relate to your feelings of loss when you were apart from your beloved NRSV NT & Psalms.
For many years ago I treasured a small RSV bible I bought when I first returned to the faith (c. 1990, just after the RSV was replaeced by the NRSV). It was leather bound and printed in England on India paper - beautiful! Then one day I found my infant son in my study carefully ripping the pages out of their binding!!! Evidently he appreciated the quality too :-)
I've never been able to replace that bible. At least your story had a happy ending.
By the way, I think the NRSV is an accurate and dignified translation, good for public reading and study. One could quibble about this or that, but the same goes for any translation.
Mark
P.E.
Thank you, I learned much from your Hertz Chumash post and I read the Duoay-Rhimes (spell?) when I was in uni, part of my easter vows and rituals along with Stations of the Cross and "Visita Iglesia". So the RCs (some) did read the Good Book though some too said you would go crazy if you read it.
LPC
PS. I would have bought you a Runza and your favorite drink or may be Chinese food w/chopsticks.
LPC
Pr. Mark,
Thanks for rejoicing w/me. I like the NRSV because the scholars came from EO, RC, Jewish and Prots. Now that makes it hard for a denominational bias to creep it, right? Yes, 1990 is when it got out.
I compared some passages of it with my own translation of GNT(as a mental exercise) and the outcome would not be too far off. I also found that NRSV take is usually reasonable and plausible.
I like the ESV too but I will stick with my NRSV because of its heterogenous scholarship.
I don't know where you are in Aus right? But I would have bought you a 4xxx or a bitter or a guinness.
LPC
Brother Lito,
I'm in Toowoomba, Queensland.
Oh, and a Guinness sounds good!
(Never touch XXXX - horrible stuff!)
MH
Pr. Mark,
You got a Guinness then. Let me know when you are in Melbourne, it would a blessing to meet you.
I go to Queensland from time to time too.
LPC
PS. That is what I heard about 4X too (LOL)
Lito,
I hope to be visiting Melbourne in 2009.
Mark
Pr. Mark,
That is still a way off but let me know please a few weeks before the time so I can put it in the schedule.
LPC
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