Person of the book

My Bible needs to go to a nursing home. The gold on the edges of the pages has faded to dingy yellow, the leather cover has a shiny worn look, and the embossed words on the binding are almost invisible. I smile when I remember that this is the "New" Revised Standard Version.   

I bought this Bible 25 years ago at the bookstore at my graduate school in Chicago. It has traveled with me almost every day in a book bag, along with my church directory, planning calendar, seminary students' papers and a new novel, all jumbled together. It accompanied me on mission trips through four continents, sat on countless podiums, lecterns and pulpits, and stayed up late with me Saturday nights when I was struggling to find a sermon worth preaching. 

There is cellophane tape over many of its torn pages, which I assume is a testimony to my favorite passages. (Why do only Bibles use this tissue-thin paper?) Many of the verses are underlined, some pages are dog-eared—and alongside Psalm 42 there's a notation I made in grad school; it claims that the psalm was sung at the baptism of St. Augustine in 387. I don't always remember a chapter-and-verse citation, but I usually remember where that verse can be found on a page of this old Bible. When the Daily Common Lectionary leads me to the last pages of Revelation, I grimace because I no longer have those pages—they were lost about ten years ago along with the maps that traced the missionary journeys of St. Paul.