WHEN I WAS IN THIRD GRADE, my parents gave my brother and me each a Bible for Christmas. We began reading our Bibles side by side. I remember sitting on the basement stairs (we probably found this a quiet spot in our tiny prairie house that was home to eight people) reading the Genesis account about about Abraham. Years later, when I began to read the Bible again, the same story of Abraham impressed me. I felt deep within myself that the promise of a grand future for the children of Abraham was also a promise of unending good for everyone, for all humanity. As when I was little, my heart overflowed with wonder.
I still find it wonderful that texts that date back thousands of years and written in ancient languages could, in translated form, touch the heart of a little boy on the Canadian prairies. That even as a child, I was moved by the Scriptures indicates to me that the ideas they contain aren't just external facts embedded in ancient times and cultures, but spiritual truths that live in every heart.
After many years of reading the Bible, I find I still return over and over to some of the same ideas in it. Here are a few.
