Several years ago, I played the role of tourist while staying in the smoky mountains of southern Tennessee. We loaded the kids in the van, got out our area attractions map, and headed to a nearby national park called Cades Cove. It was a simple affair. A cove nestled in the bosom of mist-shrouded mountains. A pastoral valley cleared and tamed as the first settlers of European descent arrived some 200 plus years ago. It remained the home of the first settlers and their descendants until the 1930s, when the U.S. government acquired it for a national park. Today it remains not dissimilar from what it was in the 1930s. A potted and bumpy paved road now traverses what was once a potted and bumpy dirt road that encircles the valley.

Today, only a few cabins and farm buildings remain. These structures no longer have a purpose as part of working farms but now are preserved as museum pieces. What once was a place where life was hard and laborious is now a scenic drive full of valley vistas and remarkable sightings of turkey, deer, and other wildlife that have grown accustomed to the slow-moving vehicles with their staring faces and clicking cameras. And yet they do remain. The cabins still show the hewing marks of their builders and original owners. The barns, still holding hollowed logs, worn smooth from their former duty of offering the grain and straw to hungry livestock. The cabins, mills, smokehouses, and barns, the plows, wagons, and planters warn and seasoned with use and age still look as though they could return to duty at this very moment. Yet every visitor knows that all these things– the houses, the mill, and the barns - the wagons, the plows, and farm implements have life no longer as useful tools but rather as museum relics of the past. They represent not what is or will be but what was and will be no longer.

The Bibles on my shelves tell in part the story of my personal walk with the Lord. There is the 3-inch thick Parallel Bible with four translations that I used through high school. Then there is the well-worn, duct taped spine, two-inch-thick Bible I used throughout most of college. I do not know why I opted for such big Bibles back then. Next to this Bible is the much thinner (Ultrathin Reference Edition) Bible I used for some of my college years and into my seminary days. It does not have as much duct tape applied, but it is all the same, held together, both on the outside and the inside, with applications of tape. Duct tape is the poor man’s rebinding. In all three of these Bibles are margin notes that reference particular times when God was moving in my life. In all three there are highlighted scripture verses that God has used to comfort, convict, and challenge me. And all three hold a special place in my heart because they were a significant part of my life in their respective seasons.

With each of these Bibles, I set them aside and began to use the next one because I preferred to use a different size or typeset. Or, in the case of the last two, they were becoming so worn, with pages falling out. Time and wear had limited their ability to keep up with the rigors of accompanying me through life and ministry.