One Day At School
I can still see myself sitting at my fifth-grade desk. There was a great deal of excitement in the air that day. It was October 28, 1971, and we were free from our normal academic routine. Several adults came to our classroom to speak to us about their different professions. At ten years old, I hadn’t seriously considered what I would be when I grew up. However, what happened that day has marked my life for more than 50 years.
My curiosity was piqued when two well-dressed gentlemen placed a large cardboard box on Mrs. Andrews’ desk and began to talk about who they were. They told us about visiting hospitals, hotels, and schools, just like ours, giving everyone they met the chance to have access to their own Bible. I had never heard of that kind of job! As they told us about their experiences and how many lives were changed, they handed each of us a small red New Testament! This was my first Bible, which I still have to this day. At that time, I had never read the Bible for myself or heard most of its stories. I was raised in a denominational church that didn’t teach salvation or offer Sunday school classes. While I don’t recall anything else that was said that morning, I do remember writing these words in my brand-new little red Bible:
“This book is my light to God.”
Only the Lord Himself could inspire my little ten-year-old mind to write such prophetic words!
Although these words continue to touch my heart each time I recall them, it took a decade for me to understand that I needed to surrender my life to the Author of my little red New Testament. I wouldn’t hear the Gospel until I was a twenty-one-year-old married college student attending an international university in Puebla, Mexico. Through many missionaries and students receiving Jesus as their Lord and Savior, I began to hear the Good News that Jesus had paid the price of my salvation with His own life and was inviting me to receive eternal life and a personal relationship with Him. I owe them all a great debt of gratitude for what they did to make the Gospel real to me, sowing the seeds that, a few months later, would help guide my husband and me to receive Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
The passion to know the Lord through His Word and to know who I am in Him has never waned; rather, it only grows stronger with each passing day. It is with this deep desire that I write these words, praying that you will be inspired to know the Lord more intimately through the power of seeing who He is and who He says you are in Him through the words He speaks to us through the written pages of the Bible. Truly, the Bible is our light to God! If we look into His Word, we will see Him, and He promises us that we will be transformed from glory to glory (2 Cor. 3:18)!