And Then He Hugged Him REALLY Hard

I am a part of the local Freecycle group, and get email messages whenever someone posts to the group. It's a great resource, and I have sent off unused "junk" to the homes of other packrats, er, people who may need my stuff, and have received some cool stuff in return.

Today, this post made me think:
-----------
Wanted

Anyone have a Bible available for studying purposes?

Also looking for a Child's Bible:
- without words like "kill" in it
- hopefully with some pictures
-------------------------------------

Not laugh, but just wonder. Has this person read the Bible? If so, they must know that the children's version is going to be sorely missing lots of good stuff. Like 90% of the book. Unless the children's version says things like, "And the Lord said to Abraham: "Uh, I really want you to sacrifice your beloved son, Isaac, to me." So, Abraham took Isaac to a mountain top, and was about to make him very sleepy so he'd go off to a different place and sleep forever, when God told Abraham he had changed his mind and didn't need a sacrifice after all." In fact, that whole Abraham story is pretty adult-themed -- His sleeping with Hagar, his wife's handmaiden to have his first child, etc.

In my one semester of Catholic school [I'm not Catholic, but in eighth grade, my mom met Heather Henley, an excessively "make-up friendly" girl in my sad little outcast group of loser friends, and decided I was not hanging out with the right "caliber" of people, so sent me to Catholic girls school for a semester. I suppose after a semester, she realized I still had no friends, and it was costing a lot of money, so she let me go back to my public school.] we studied the Old Testament, and one of the projects we had was to make a children's version of a book of the Bible, with illustrations, to give to some poor kids (and by poor, I mean, really, those poor kids, having to read something written and illustrated by freshman Catholic schoolgirls!). I chose Nehemiah, which was pretty non-violent as I recall, and involved a big wall-building party in Jerusalem. I referenced my children's Bible a lot trying to do a kiddie version of that story, though, flipping between that and the school-issued Catholic version. In fact, in those formidable years, I spent a lot of time reading my children's Bible, and if Mom hadn't pulled me out of Catholic school second semester freshman year, I might have converted! Hey, I could have been a nun today!

On that note, I should try to see if I still have my children' Bible, so I can pass it on. Hmm, then again, maybe I should just send this link instead.