Share Those Little Verses

Last week, I stopped, captivated by a headline, and then I read an interesting story from Fox News: Family cites 'miracle' after Bible survives devastating house fire intact in Philippines | Fox News. The article told the story of a family in the Philippines that suffered a devastating house fire on November 27. Almost everything they owned was destroyed, “reducing most of their belongings to black ash and melted debris.” But much to their surprise, as they began to sift through the ashes, they found their family Bible, completely untouched by the fire, even though other nearby books were destroyed.

The mother of this family, Ruth Mary Repuyan, documented her family’s unbelievable discovery via video, declaring, “We will celebrate Christmas with nothing left. Everything was burnt, and the only thing we have is the Bible. This is a miracle.”

The entire story brought to mind similar miraculous stories I had heard over the years, so I left the Fox News website and googled “Bible untouched by fire.” Immediately, several other stories emerged, some dating back for years. Each account recorded fires in which fully intact Bibles were found in the ashes.

One story in particular (Historic Bible Survives After 180-Yr-Old Mississippi Church Burned Down) was astounding to me because it took place three years ago in nearby Oxford, Mississippi. On August 13, 2022, this Oxford fire occurred at College Hill Presbyterian Church, which was built in 1844 and contained a precious, historic Bible that had sat on the church’s pulpit every day for the past 178 years.

But guess what! Yep, you already know.

Even though everything in that historic church sanctuary was destroyed that summer night in 2022, including the building’s original pews and its gorgeous stained-glass windows, the 178-year-old Bible survived the fire. The article reported that the biblical miracle occurred “thanks in part to the fact that someone had closed it that evening just hours before the fire, despite the fact that it’s usually left open.”

Doug Paul, one of the church’s elders, told WANT-TV, a station located in Memphis, Tennessee, “We are a Bible-believing church, and we believe that that is the Word of God, and that is sustaining. And so, the idea that essentially nothing in this church survived but the Word of God – that’s not lost on us.”

That Mississippi miracle and the various other Bible survivor stories I read about were not lost on me either. In fact, they blessed my heart tremendously, especially because another thing I read a few weeks back had left my heart a little bruised and battered.

To explain my heartache, I first need to explain that I share a daily Bible verse with each of our teenage grandkids and a few other young people. This habit came from an amazing experience I had with a precious American Family Association supporter during one of our bi-annual AFA Share-a-thons.

If you have the time, please read the whole story behind my daily Bible verse texts HERE. Suffice it to say that these verses have been a daily family habit for more than five years. In fact, I currently send out four Bible verses each day to two grandkids and two young people that I simply love beyond words.

With that backstory, let me confess that someone I also love dearly made a comment that hurt my heart over those verses a few weeks back. Even though this comment was said kind of sarcastically and out of the way, it somehow hurt me deeply.

Now, keep in mind that I usually have thick skin – probably because I raised boys, tough boys, and they tend to be sarcastic in their comments to me. It takes a lot to hurt my feelings. I am more apt to laugh at hard comments, and I must guard my tongue to not instantly come back with some hard, biting sarcasm of my own. In fact, over the years, I have learned that my hurt feelings are not nearly as important as my response to those bruised feelings.

But this comment was different. For some reason, it just stuck with me, like a burr under a saddle, constantly rubbing against me. My first response was to check myself, to pray about why it bothered me so much.

As it stung me over and over again these past weeks, I often kind of laughed and thought of the truth of one of my favorite verses, “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.”

I searched my heart repeatedly for actions that might not reflect those “little verses” that I share daily. I repeatedly prayed, confessed my sins, and asked God to take “the sword of His Spirit, which is the Word of God,” and examine my intentions and motivations behind sending out those little daily verses.

And honestly, despite my sins and shortcomings, I keep coming back to the fact that no matter how much I (a very human and sinful grandparent) give or do not give my beloved grandchildren, there is nothing more important, more worthy, more powerful, or more life-changing than His Word. It is priceless!

There really is no greater treasure I can give to anyone other than the Word of God. But it is also a costly gift – for the giver and the receiver, according to multiple verses found in the book of Revelation.

As an accounting of that cost, we read in the first chapter of Revelation that the Savior’s beloved disciple, John, was imprisoned on the island of Patmos because of his testimony of Jesus Christ and the Word of God. We also read that believers may even suffer beheading for sharing the Word of God and testifying about our Savior, Jesus Christ. So, yes, we must count the cost of the Word of God (Revelation 20:4).

With all of this in mind, I recently reminded myself that, according to John 1:1, every time we read or share a Bible verse – even when we pull-up a verse online – we are literally looking at, reading, and sharing God: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Stop and think about the profoundness of that one, single verse: God IS His Word.

Wow, and He is also “not a man that he should lie,” and His Word will never, ever return unto Him void (Isaiah 55:11).

Therefore, the truth is, even if every Bible on earth burns up, (though, it is obvious, many of them do not), the Word of God is eternal: “The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God endures forever” (Isaiah 40:8). And as Matthew 24 declares, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away.”

So, go ahead and share those “little verses,” my friends. Share them as much as possible, for they are literally, “life to those who find them and health to one’s whole body” (Proverbs 4:22).