I have started a new hobby. I collect small leather Bibles in different translations. I have several that I use, among them the ESV, NASB, NLT, HSCB, and the Message. For those who aren’t as nerdy as me, that’s the English Standard Version, the New American Standard Version, the New Living Translation, The Holman Christian Standard, and the Message (there’s really no cool abbreviations for that one yet, but I’m thinking maybe something clever and trendy like The M).

I’m a big believer in variety, whether it involves Starbucks, ice cream, music, or Bibles. I don’t just use one translation anymore. I switch between several. Ususally, I will read a passage in the ESV and then follow up with the Message. I tend to use the Message as a suppliment, because sometimes it gets a little too loose with the translating.

The point is not what translation you use, but how often you use it. How familiar you are with it. This could be another one of those times where I tell you I don’t read the Bible nearly as much as I should, but it’s not. The point is not to beat yourself up about how you don’t read the Bible for hours upon hours a day.

Start small. 5 minutes here, 5 minutes there. If I tried to start out with a marathon 6-hour Bible study session, I would probably not last very long. The idea is that the Bible is not a book you talk about or reference or read other books about, but a book that you read.

I’ve heard the Bible described as your Letters from Home. Kinda like when I was in college and I used to get  letters from mom. They started off hand-written, then they were typed, then she progressed to computer-drafted letters. The point is that each of those letters were a piece of her I had with me in college.

The same way with God. No matter what translation you use, you’re getting God’s Love Letter to you. It’s all about God’s great plan for the world and how He has invited you and me to be a part of it. How He picked nobodies and losers and outcasts and ordinary Joes and Janes like you and me to be on the winning team.

I think if you read it that way, it will mean more to you than if you read it as a book of rules and regulations or as a manual to show others how you’re so much more superior to them because you keep all the small laws in Leviticus. Those are impersonal, but God is a personal Being who has chosen to share His heart with us in these books compiled in the Bible.

I hope you will fall in love with God’s Word and grow to cherish it. I pray the same for me. As a pastor once said, May we have Bibles that are frayed and worn out and falling apart and lives that aren’t.

I like that. I think I’ll use that.