There is something that many people crave even more than their daily food.
This is most true in countries and areas of the world where people often wonder if that day they will eat.
What can this something be? Love? That is a good guess and is partly right, but is not the accurate answer.
Then is it world peace? It has something to do with that.
Is it their human rights that are often violated? No. Then what is it?
It is something that we in the US have in abundance, in fact overabundance. It is God's Word, the Bible.
I daresay that in most homes, even in the homes of casual Christians who rarely attend worships services, are over one Bible. In the homes of many of us in the Christian community, we own even more Bibles. Many simply use some Bibles to keep mementos in. It has been said that "The Bible is the best-selling but least-read book in the world." I don't know where the source got these figures but maybe he was talking about how much it is read compared to its brisk sales. In many parts of the world, it is illegal to own a Bible or read it. Recently, in North Korea, a number of people were reportedly publicly executed just because it was found that they owned Bibles! In that country, if found with a Bible, people can be sent to concentration camps to die, with family members. There is one reported instance of this. In China, so many thousands of people convert to Christ each day that there are probably more Christians in China than there are in America. Unlike in the US, in China, the demand for Bibles far exceeds the supply. In many villages, many people will tear up pages of one Bible and share it among many people! On my Newsfeed the other day, a video showed the very emotional reaction of Chinese Christians receiving copies of the Bible for themselves. Their excitement was obvious on their faces! Their response was like children opening up Christmas gifts for the very first time! People in the Third World treasure Bibles as they are often so rare and hard to get! In many countries it is much the same as in China. Some people groups do not even have a Bible in their "heart language." In many impoverished countries, people simply cannot access copies of Bibles because of economics or low literacy. Throughout so much of the world, to own a Bible is a privilege that they can only dream of.
The situation in the United States is much different, where copies of God's Word are super-abundant. We have many different translations, so many that we have disunity over which translation to use! We have Bibles for every age group. We have children's Bibles, teen Bibles, men's Bibles, women's Bibles, mom's Bibles, bride's Bibles and even Bibles for grandmothers. I have even seen a breast cancer awareness Bibles! Human nature being what it is, it is hard to treasure God's Word for what it is when it is so super-abundant. But in most of the Third World, things are totally different. And for just $5 a Bible, you can give someone on the continent of Asia a Bible that he or she will treasure and which will be a gift which will keep on giving as long as he or she has it. To make this happen, go here. Thank you!
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