I'm sitting here staring at the pages of my black, "A Reader's Hebrew and Greek Bible" praying for something to write about. It's a great Bible for having access to the original language texts and their lexicons right at your fingertips. My Hebrew is still pretty rudimentary. I still need to reference an English text to find anything. But the Greek text is generally pretty open and easy for me these days. It's rare I need an English text to locate anything there. I know these pages, their layout and where to find just about anything, better than I do any of the English translation Bibles I have.
The one gripe I have about this particular Bible is the binding. The binding broke not long after I got it so that it's half come away from the pages of the book itself. I've tried repairing it with different kinds of glue, even duct tape, but the repairs never hold. It always comes apart again. I hid my broken Bible in a big black, "Swiss Army" Bible cover which almost resembles a briefcase for a long time before I decided to just pull it out and put it directly on my desk, broken binding, residual duct tape, and all.
I bought this Bible to replace my aging and worn "A Reader's Greek New Testament." This was a nice, red, leather covered New Testament that I have had for so long I don't remember when I got it, and it looks like it now. The pages are filled with notes and underlining. They're dirty, especially certain books and passages, from my fingers going over them again and again. The nice leather wore off of the cover, as did the gold leaf lettering to where I had to use a pen to re-mark the cover title. The spine was opened so many times that it has absolutely no resistence now, and just falls open easily. Most importantly though, the New Testament of the Bible I have now is an exact copy, page for page, of this older New Testament, so that I don't have to learn the page layouts again at all. None of my Bibles or New Testaments show the wear and use which this one does, and even now it, rather than the black, full Bible, still accompanies me when I go on trips because it fits much more easily into my laptop bag.
The closest English Bible I have which might show a similar amount of wear is either my old "Pastor's Bible," an "Orthodox Study Bible," or my old rose colored "New Scofield New King James Study Bible" which I bought at the first Bible School I attended back when I was eighteen or nineteen. The one that really shows its wear and age though is no longer in my library, but was given to my son years ago. That was the New King James Bible I was given as a birthday present by my mother when I turned sixteen. That one makes my old Pastor's Bible look pristine, especially with the nail hole in the spine (I was trying to repair it without knowing what I was doing).
Underneath my black Hebrew and Greek Bible on my desk is my "quotes journal." This is a journal I bought to replace all of the index cards I had around my desk, computer monitor, and wall that I had filled with quotes of wisdom and Scripture (Greek text). I was running out of room, so I copied them all into the journal, and now I continue to put different texts and quotes into it when I run across good ones. Everything from the Greek text of the N.T. to quotes from the Matrix, the Philokalia, the Tao Te Ching, the Gospel of Buddha, Star Wars, C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, and George MacArthur have made it into this little grey book.
I still have some of those quote framed on my wall to my left. Chiefly and in a prominent place are the conditions of discipleship from Luke in Greek. Underneath these are also in Greek a prayer, Colossians 3:3, and 1 John 4:8 and 10. Above these are quotes from the Dalai Lama, a prayer I wrote, and a quote from Dan Millman.
Directly above my monitor, and the most prominent fixture at my desk is a picture of Jesus Christ as painted by Akiane. It's my favorite portrait of Him because it's the face which most resembles what He actually looked like based on a number of things, and was identified by a 4 or 5 year old boy as Jesus' actual face out of dozens of pictures after an NDE. Akiane herself painted it when she was 8 after seeing it in a vision. It's the face which most calls to me deep into my soul. The one something within me somehow remembers though these eyes have never seen it.
Outside of all of these things, on my desk and to my left is my refurbished Panasonic Toughbook, arguably my favorite computer that is probably on it's tenth operating system, Windows 8.1 for now, and directly in front of me mounted on the wall is my desktop monitor which was kindly bought for me for my birthday by my daughter in order to replace the one that died.
I don't really know why I'm led to describe what's right in front of me this morning, but this is the environment in which I study, write, play games (Fallout 4 most recently), and frequently watch movies or series when I have time.
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