When I was eight years old, Grandma Sarah gave me a red leather bible. I carried it to church every Sunday, and I tried to read it even though the King James Version was way over my head as a third grader! But I loved my Bible. I loved the smell of the leather! I loved the sound the pages made as they turned beneath my fingers. I loved what I read—that God loved me—third grade me—with an everlasting love. Deep down, I knew there was something holy, something “other” about it. Something deep within me knew that just like the glue on the binding held its pages together, the truth in its pages would somehow hold me together too.

And it did.

When I turned fifteen, my world fell apart. I could no longer read the words in my red leather Bible because I couldn’t see them. I became blind due to a retinal disease, and I could no longer read it. But the truth in its pages did hold me together—and its truth still does.

Now, as a grown-up blind woman, I use other versions of the Bible along with the King James and I no longer finger through those thin, oniony pages—I listen to the Bible on audio and through apps on my computer and phone instead.

But no matter how I experience the Bible, it always has the same effect on me. One profound, unavoidable, irreducible, soul-quaking effect—I feel the love of God.

I want that for you too. God deeply loves you—He loves you with an everlasting love.

So God tells you in sixty-six ways . . . in each and every book of the Bible.

From Genesis to Revelation, you’ll see how much you matter to God. As you read through the history and poetry in the Old Testament books, you’ll be reminded that God knows you and sees you and loves you no matter what. As you experience the Gospels and letters in the New Testament, you’ll feel how His love challenges and changes you.

My prayer for you is that you, too, will feel the profound, unavoidable, irreducible, soul-quaking effect of His love as you experience it in sixty-six ways.

JENNIFER ROTHSCHILD

March 2016