This Sunday, our church will be celebrating the 400th anniversary of the King James Version. We will be reading each scripture passage from the KJV rather than the New Revised Standard Version which is the version we have in our church pews.
A couple of weeks ago, I visited my mom and was able to sort through some old items in her attic. To my delight and surprise, I stumbled upon a small leather bound KJV bible with s snap-on cover. It's in great condition and my mom's signature was on the first page. My mom has her own personal bible that she uses everyday, so this bible was more of a keepsake for her.
Since I knew that we would be celebrating the anniversary of the KJV on May 1st, I received permission to bring this bible back home with me to read during worship. Yesterday, as I was visiting folks throughout the day, I took this bible with me and read from it.
While this serves as a nice little story of the fortunate timing of me discovering my mom's KJV so that I could use for our May 1st Sunday, there is another little miracle on all of this.
During one of my visits, I opened to the first page of this bible to show my mom's signature to the person who was with me. My eyes glanced to the opposite page where my mom had written this scripture reference - Luke 24:13-32 which is the Emmaus road story.
The miracle is that this is one of the scripture passages we will be using during worship this Sunday!
In that moment, I could understand why the disciples in the Emmaus story upon recognizing the risen Jesus said, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?"
My heart is still burning.
The King James Version of the Bible has always been my favorite version of the Bible. I always read and study from the KJV. The KJV Bible that I currently use was a gift from my parents on my birthday Dec 20, 1975. I was 19 years old at the time and a freshman in college and that was what I wanted for my birthday. This Bible is also where I store alot of things. At one time I had so many things in it, the binding was starting to break. I don't usually carry it to church because I like to listen to the Pastor read the scripture rather than following along as he reads it. However, I will be bringing it to church this Sunday as we celebrate the 400th anniversary of the KJV. I was touched by the story about your mother's KJV Bible. Brings back fond memories of my mother. My mother took her favorite Bible (KJV)to heaven with her.
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