I remember being on a youth camp years ago where the camp speaker made a point of getting all of us to hold up our Bibles at the start of each of his talks and then making us enthusiastically say the words together "this is my Bible". It seemed a bit odd at the time, but I suppose what he was doing was making sure we had them with us and his hope was that this book was becoming more familiar to us - as if we were forming a friendship with it.

From time to time I recognise that I need to re-examine my relationship with the Scriptures: Am I spending time in the Bible outside of Sundays? Am I becoming more familiar with its key themes, as well as its obscure corners and hidden treasures?

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once wrote these words about the Scriptures: "When we turn to the Bible with an empty spirit, moved by intellectual vanity, striving to show our superiority to the text; or as barren souls who go sight-seeing to the words of the prophets, we discover the shells but miss the core ... The Bible is the frontier of the spirit where we must move and live in order to discover and to explore. It is open to him or her who gives themselves to it, who lives with it intimately."

What an invitation! How is your relationship with your Bible at the moment?