The Book Alive

The husband had fallen asleep as his wife finished reading her Bible in bed. Suddenly she threw her hand on to the chest of the sleeping spouse, screaming out, “There’s a man in this book!”

There is, indeed!

In one sense, the Bible is simply a book, with rows of words in order, telling a story, informing or instructing. Yet, when the eyes of the person reading it are opened to its truth, and that God himself authored it, those same words are transformational. God is himself speaking in the Bible—His words to you. The reader realizes that what is being read is truth, yes, but on a level far beyond mere facts. It is “true truth” as apologist Francis Schaeffer used to say, because it comes from God himself.

“He who is of God hears the words of God,” Jesus said in John 8:47.

In the following poem, a man holds the Bible once owned by his deceased friend, now buried at his feet.

With The Book at His Grave
Jim Elliff

The book with dust
And wear from hands,
Such boards and paper you had touched,
And such your eyes had seen,
I read as mine.
Below me now your eyes are fixed into a stare—
And such this book demands of me
When meditating there.
Those eyes that saw what I now read,
We stare alike.
For, blind as you, these pages read our common frailty
(We are but dust),
Our certain destiny
(We are immortal souls).
This book can see!
Our eyes may set upon its watch,
But living by another breath
It has no death.

Copyright © Jim Elliff 2017