Good Book

Yesterday for the big book sale, I was assigned to work in the hardback novels across the mall from the religion section where I had helped to set up on Thursday. Since I was curious to see how the many “religious” books had done, I slipped over there a time or two to find out. I arrived at noon, four and a half hours into the event, and I saw that about two thirds of all the books that had been stacked on the tables and boxed under them in that section had been sold. It had been a popular area! But I was especially curious about what had happened on the half of one table that was covered with Christian Bibles. On Thursday, there had been about ten big “family” Bibles, King James, Student, Moms and Women's Bibles. There were small Gideon New Testaments, the ones that are handed out at graduations and other milestone events, leather bound and paperbacks Bibles, Jerusalem Bibles, New English Bibles, Scofield and Living, Korean and Spanish, Good News Bibles and so on. Some looked as if they had never been read or opened; some were worn, marked in, and inscripted with names. On the dedication page of one was a note written in an obvious trembling hand to a grandson, encouraging him to read Psalm 23 daily. Another held certificates of accomplishment that belonged to a 1985 graduate of a local high school. I wondered about the journeys the Bibles took to land on the table. I wondered if any volunteer had ever found money stuck between the pages of one. Sometimes the living and active Word of God is mistaken for a book.