“Bible Imprints, $5,” the sign read.  I’ve never had a bible that had my name on it. To celebrate my third re-birthday I decided the time had come to get that done. I rushed home to grab my bible and rushed back to get it in before the shop closed.

The shopkeeper took my bible in his hand and brushed his thumb against the damask design. The raised design against the flat leather raised his eyebrow.

“Oh, these bibles give us trouble. The raised design sometimes makes it hard to imprint a name clearly,” he said.

I frowned and was just about to turn away but I asked him if he would try it anyway. I convinced him that if it came out imperfect that’d be okay because despite salvation I was still an imperfect person.

He laughed and took my bible. He placed it with a pile of other bibles and said it’d be done in a few days.

I picked my bible up today. The silver scroll is a little crooked in places and the e’s seem to tilt a little too much to the right, but I don’t mind. There’s something about having my name imprinted on the front of my bible that makes my decision to follow Jesus that more real. It’s like I’m marking His word the way His word marked me.

This isn’t just a bible anymore, this is my bible – this is my daily bread, my red letters, my eternal life. Even if someone were to wind up with my imprinted bible, I wouldn’t mind because I’d want them to be able to be imprinted the way I’ve imprinted my bible.

The scroll’s a little crooked and the e’s tilt a little too far to the right but that doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter because not only is my name imprinted on my bible now, but it is also and more importantly, imprinted permanently in the Lamb’s Book of Life.

It took imprinting my name on my bible to remind me of an eternal truth I sometimes forget – that I have been forever redeemed from death and presently waiting until my name is called from the Book of Life at the end of this age. This revelation is one that never gets old, and it’s one I ask you to receive with me – the mystery that is the freedom found in salvation in Christ.

But nothing unclean will ever enter it [heaven], nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Revelation 21:27

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