As readers of my blog will know I set great store by the Bible. I consider it one of the ways that God relates to us. It contains words of wisdom for our lives as well words of comfort and direction. We can never exhaust the Bible. Sometimes we will read something which we have read hundreds of times before and it is illuminated to us and speaks to us with a new message.
I am of an age that I was brought up with the King James Versio0n. I no longer read that and have moved through the New King James Version to now reading the N.I.V. Therein lies a problem for me. As a child I learned passages from the Bible. There are two things which stop that happening now. Firstly, being older memorising passages are more difficult for me. But the other reason is that I have to ask myself which version do I use?
The KJV had a literacy beauty to it, which made it easy to remember, though I am told by scholars that there were many inaccuracies in the translation. The NIV and other versions do not trip off the tongue so smoothly. I have a problem.
The most important thing is to read and study the Bible and not to neglect it under any circumstances. So I keep the KJV to comfort me through the night and when I need arrow prayers and words of scripture. Then when reading and studying I use one of the many versions on offer. As I also learned as a child. – ‘Read your Bible every day, if you want to grow.’