I have loved the Bible since I was a little girl. Mr. Pinky, who traveled to the remote Harlan County schools sang a song to us when I was in first grade for about six weeks at the old Hensley School at Smith about the Bible.

“The B-I-B-L-E

Yes, that’s the book for me

I stand upon the Word of God

The B-I-B-L-E.” (Author unknown and date unknown)

As a child, when I was afraid of vampires and ghoulies invading my room or my dreams, I slept with the Bible under my pillow. I was taught that nothing unholy could come across the Word of God, so I made sure I had it near while I slept. As I grew older, I often fell asleep reading a chapter from the Good Book.

The Bible is the world’s most read book, no question. According to www.reference.com, there have been over 3.9 BILLION Bibles sold over time, and that doesn’t include all of the ones that were printed to be given freely, without charge. Also, there is no way to estimate the number of Bibles that have been handed down from one generation to the next and still being read by a new generation. Another source estimates that about 6 billion have been sold and no possible way to tell how many are in circulation.

Christianresearch.org says that about 50 Bibles are sold per minute.

The numbers have to be impressive by anybody’s calculations!

Some people express the thoughts that the Bible isn’t relevant for today. I’m stunned by this notion. It is phenomenal to me that the stories in the Bible are absolutely relevant to today’s society even though some were written more than a thousand years ago. We don’t have the market on sins such as greed, adultery, liars, thieves, warmongers, and the politically ambitious. Even though the stories are ancient, they capture the essence of mankind in all of our strengths and in all of our weaknesses.

According to www.biblica.com, “…as far as reliability is concerned, it’s only fair to note that the Bible contains the best documented text of any volume in human history. Perhaps the most amazing support comes from the Dead Sea scrolls which were discovered in 1947 after lying in the Qumran caves for nearly 2000 years. Here were literally thousands of pieces from the Old Testament, and some were nearly a thousand years older than anything we had before. And yet there is a 98% similarity to the texts that are in common use. Both Christians and Jews were confirmed in their faith in the trustworthiness of the text handed down through the centuries.

The Bible still offers hope to the hopeless, healing for the sick, restoration for the wounded, liberty to the captive, mending of the brokenhearted, and a promise of God’s love to those who call on Him. Who could possibly think these things are irrelevant or not needed in today’s world?

The Bible is still a book of comfort and hope. Its pages are filled with accounts of people who demonstrated basic human emotions, strengths, and faults. There are love stories, spy stories, stories about civil rights, stories of pretty girls and handsome men. There are heroic accounts, stories about laws and governance, military strategy, stories about rich and poor. I’ve heard people with the uncanny ability to link any circumstance or situation offered to them and make an almost immediate connection to a story found in the Bible.

Personally, I find that every time I open the Bible, there is some new inspiration, insight, or understanding about the character of God or the human condition. How can that possibly be irrelevant?

Reach longtime Enterprise columnist Judith Victoria Hensley at judith99@bellsouth.net or on Facebook. Check out her blog: One Step Beyond the Door.