A Real Connection

Tonight I attended a wonderful study at Speedwell Presbyterian led by Reverend Rebecca Taylor.  We learned about the writing, copying, translating and printing of the Bible and how it came to the form as we know it today.  It was quite a journey, incredible in its magnitude and scope, relying on the expertise and dedication of thousands of scholars over approximately 1400 years.  We touched on the many versions of the Bible now in print:  NIV, KJV, The Message, and so on.  And there are so many study Bibles out there--those designed for women, teens, college students, children, devotional, and many more.  For so long, the common person could not read, much less own a hand-copied Bible.  Now the market is inundated with the most read book in history.  Consider for a moment if we had no Bible at all.  Consider if none of those incredible writings had ever been committed to print.  Would it change anything about our relationship to and with God?  As precious as the works of the Biblical writers are to us as Christians, the poetry, the history, the stories of Jesus' ministry, they are all extraneous to the "real connection."  The true connection to God is the inherent desire we feel to commune with the eternal.  We are a part of God and He is the pure love that brings us into relationship with Him.  I love the language of the Bible, but I understand that without it, my relationship with God would not miss a beat.