Today's college student can “rent”
an online book—unlike my “era” when long lines for
textbook-buying snaked out of the college bookstore at the beginning
of each term. The most prized copies—cheaper to buy—had the sticker
“used” on them. They also typically had generous colored markings
inside, thanks to “highlighter markers.” The more markings, the lower the resell value.
We of the Highlighter Generation can
thank a chemist named Dr. Frank Honn, who in 1963 (my high school
junior year) invented what became a ubiquitous study tool. However, early “highlighters” tended to bleed through thin paper, which included
my Bible. In time, a waxy highlighter became available and my go-to
for Bible-marking.
Today, those Bible-marking “highlights”
re-tell something of my spiritual history. Once I broke away from the
thinking that I shouldn't write in my Bible, it became a poignant
record of my times with God and sermons that touched my heart. My
first Bible (King James Version) was my dad's Bible from young
adulthood, a gift from his Sunday school teacher. Its front-page
inscription is dated Dec. 25, 1935, meaning my dad was 20 years old.
I know little of my dad's early history
other than his mother died (probably of pneumonia in those
pre-antibiotic days) when he was 12. His dad worked for the railroad,
and desperately needed help caring for his small children. Thus his
dad quickly married a single co-worker (a railroad cook) who
practiced a ritualistic faith, not that of Dad's birth mother. After
high school, Dad attended college in his hometown, finding a church
home where Bible-reading mattered.
Years later, when I was 8 or 9, Dad
gave me that Bible to take to church and Sunday school. It was,
however, more a “prop” for “who-brought-their-Bible-today”
checks. But Dad's old Bible was, well, old, with
tiny type with lots of “ye,” “thee” and “thou.”
Ninety years later
after he acquired it, I still have it (along with a “New King
James,” “Revised Standard Version,” “Living Bible,”
“Amplified New Testament,” “New American Standard,” and my
personal study Bible, New International Version. Sometimes, in
reaching for my dad's King James version, I'll read the first-page
inscription in red pencil by his long-ago Sunday school teacher. It
says:
This marked copy of God's sure Word
is given you as a prize for your faithful attendance at Sunday
school. Another prize is promised you in this book for faithfulness
to God wants you to find: “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will
give thee a crown of life” (Romans 2:10).
With the same red
pencil, his teacher had highlighted thirty key verses or
sections of the Bible—one third in the Old Testament, two-thirds in
the New. His Sunday school teacher did not sign the inscription. I
sometimes wonder about him or her. But I'm grateful that this person
took the time to emphasize the value of a Bible to a young adult in a
Sunday school class—one who lost a loving parent and needed a
spiritual mentor to highlight vital truths from God.
Readers...do you have a “personal
Bible” story?
*Carter's Ink Company produced the
first pens, trademarked Hi-Liter (c); In 1975 Avery Dennison
Corporation acquired Carter's and took on highlighter production.
