January 30, 2023 - Good Morning! It’s Monday, January 30.
The Library of Congress is the official library of the United States. It was started in 1800, but during the War of 1812, the British burned it to the ground. On January 30, 1815, 6000 books from the personal collection of Thomas Jefferson were purchased to restore the library. Today it boasts over 170 million books. You can visit your national library in Washington D.C. - in the Thomas Jefferson Building. But, unless you’re a high government official, you can’t check anything out.
Lots of Americans love books. And we love collecting books. I have about a thousand at my house (I’m no Thomas Jefferson!). I know that you, at the very least, have 66 books in your home. The first one is titled Genesis and the last Revelation. The Library of Congress has The Gutenberg Bible and a copy of Jefferson’s Bible. Over the centuries, some, in protest, have chosen to burn the Bible. In 2009 there was even a church in South Carolina that burned Bibles - all the ones that weren’t in the King James Version.
But the Bible endures, and continues to be “a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path”.
Isaiah 40:8 - “The grass withers and the flower fades, but the Word of the Lord endures forever”.
Meet you back here tomorrow,
Bro. David
dmathis@fbccenter.org
