Topic(s): Bible Study, Pain & Suffering

The train blew its whistle and wove its way along the winding rails of the hometown of a brother in Hungary. A communist customs agent came through checking all the baggage. The sack of Bibles sat at our brother’s feet. By his side lay his own personal Bible with notes and sermon outlines. The customs agent looked at the sack first. He opened it and thumbed through the pages of the Bible and began to sail them out the window of the speeding train.

As if for spite, the agent looked down at the open, used (obviously personal) Bible of our brother, grabbed it, and sailed it out the window to parts unknown. For three years our brother bemoaned the fact that his good Bible with so many notes and sermons was no longer his constant companion. “I believe Romans 8:28, but, Lord, how can this work out for good?” he wondered.

One day he received his personal Bible through the mail. A letter enclosed read, “Dear Brother in Christ: Thank you, Thank you, for the use of your Bible. I found it by the railroad three years ago. I have kept it, read it, and studied it often. My family and I have written many Scriptures down on paper and many more in our hearts. We cannot thank you enough, for now maybe we can go to heaven . . . But brother, please forgive me for keeping our Bible so long. I thought that if I did not read it now, I might never again find a Bible to read.

“Oh, Great God and Father of us all, forgive me for my doubting,” wept our Hungarian brother.

Would not it be wonderful if all could come to the Bible as if we found it for the first time? We could be simply “Christians” with a deep desire to go to heaven, to be with the saints of all the ages. Pick up your New Testament and read it again for the first time. That is, read it as if you had never read it before. Follow what it says—not what some man says it says. Do what it commands—not what some other book requires (2 Timothy 3:16–17).

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” —Romans 8:28