One of the pearls of wisdom uttered by the Beaver, the title character on the fifties TV show “Leave it to Beaver,” was his observation in defense of education that “If you couldn’t read, you couldn’t look up what’s on television.” To a child, certainly a great argument for literacy!

We have almost universal literacy today, but the Literacy Project estimates that forty-five million Americans are actually functionally illiterate, and that 44% of Americans do not read a book in a year.

But the statistics are probably worse in relation to biblical literacy. Even church-going folks often don’t know where to look up things in the Bible, and never read their Bibles.

The psalmist thought of the scriptures as a lamp unto his feet and a light unto his path (Psalm 119:105). Jesus said, “If a man love me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him” (John 14:23). How can we keep Jesus’s words of eternal life if we do not read the Bible?

If you can’t read, get some help. And if you can read, don’t neglect your Bible.