Bob Dole, senator from Kansas, and presidential candidate in 1996, was severely injured in battle just a few months before the end of World War II. Initially paralyzed from the neck down, he endured years of surgeries and treatment which allowed him to walk again, but he never regained much use of his right arm. To look “normal,” he learned to hold a pen in that paralyzed right hand, and shook hands, with his left hand.

Bob Dole found a solution to his problem to look normal. But I wonder how often folks carry that Bible in hand, not to read and study it, but to “look normal.” Or even worse, to suggest a faith that is not even there. Don’t just carry your Bible, use it!

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were more interested in looking religious than in actually being religious. Three times in Matthew 6, Jesus said, “They have their reward.” They impressed men, but Jesus did not approve. The better example is the Bereans who “received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” (Acts 17:11).

Your Bible is the revealed word of God, “a light to your path.” Don’t allow it to just be a prop in your hand.