A lived-in Bible marks a lived-out faith

A lived-in Bible!

I moved with my wife from the UK to Minnesota in July 2007 to take up what would become a life-changing new role at Best Buy’s corporate headquarters. Prior to making the move, we visited for a few days in March to meet company leadership and learn more about the role and the place we expected to live for the next two or three years.

It’s fair to say March in Minnesota is not a promising prospect. The startling blue cold of winter has given way to a partial melt, leaving the sky shrouded in mist and the ground covered in grey slush. The glorious green and golden Minnesota summer is a very unlikely, almost impossible-to-imagine two-month fever dream away.

Best Buy Corp HQ in March

We were very un-wowed and came within an inch of calling the whole thing off.

John Piper saved the day.

Due to fly back out late on the Saturday, we visited Bethlehem Baptist Church in downtown Minneapolis to watch John Piper preach before heading to the airport.

You can hear the sermon he preached here. My wife tells a story about how this sermon on headship played a decisive part in her commitment to support a move about which she had significant misgivings. But that’s a story for another day.

What grabbed me then, and what inspires me to recount it today, is not what he taught us but what John Piper showed us. 

That dismal Saturday evening was the first time Piper had returned to his pulpit after an extended break spent ministering to his father as he passed his final days in a hospital in Greenville, South Carolina. Piper details these days incredibly movingly here. (To live a life worthy of this tribute should be the goal of us all.)

William Piper’s Bible, poems and songs

Breaking the “fourth wall,” Piper left the pulpit and came down to the floor, walking up and down the aisles with his father’s well-used and worn Bible in his hands. A Bible that had truly been “lived-in” so his faith could be fully lived out.

What’s more, the loving wear caused by years of reference and use had made the Bible more precious, not less. Because it holds the living word of God, every used Bible tells a universal yet unique story. And Piper treasured this one. Not just for the truths it contained but for the unbroken death-defying connection it guaranteed between his father, his faith, and himself.

Because William Piper had lived in the book, the book was now outliving him, creating a “supernatural” link between father and son.

Since then, with that image ingrained in my mind, I have often asked myself the question; 

“If I died tomorrow, what story would my Bible show and tell of my faith? Where had I lingered, and what had I avoided altogether? Was I diligent or negligent?”

Sadly, the answers to all these questions would speak to a half-hearted faith. My Bible is that of a tourist, not a resident.

I can truthfully claim, of course, that since 2007, my devotions have become increasingly digital. There’s always an app and a podcast for that, and I have consumed them happily and often gainfully. But “more digital” always means “more ephemeral.” Whatever trail I am leaving, it’s one that only Google will follow, serving me ads and further distractions for my trouble. 

Our digital devotions are often forgettable to us and will forever be invisible to our families. Leaving no trace of faith for them to follow and find hope, inspiration, and comfort in, beyond the brief span of our lives.

Hand-copied passages from the Bible are a one-of-a-kind legacy

I started copying out passages from the Bible for many good reasons: to address my poor attention span and comprehension and to be able to recall at lunchtime what I had read before breakfast. 

But one of my favorite reasons is the hope that my children and my children’s children will one day be able to hold in their hands volumes I have completed and think to themselves;

“That’s pretty bad handwriting for an educated man…but he must have loved The Word.”

…and for that love to abide in them, defying death and connecting us through an unbroken traceable thread. Just as John Piper is forever connected to his father through his Bible.