THE BIBLE IN MY LIFE June 26, 2006 Issue

FRESH LIGHT EVERY DAY

MEG DENDLER

CURLED UP in my parents' bed with the groovy shiny gold floral bedspread, I listened to my mom read me the story of Moses straight from the Bible. I couldn't have been more than seven or eight, but it's a vivid memory. Sometimes we would stop and talk about the lessons the Bible offered, but mostly she just read it to me, word by word, passage by passage.

Since I was raised in a Christian Science household, the Bible was always there. When I didn't feel well, one of my parents would pray with me, often reading to me from the Weekly Bible Lesson in the Christian Science Quarterly. Bible stories filled my Sunday School education.

As I grew older, I loved to find out what was behind these stories. Who were these people? And why did they do the things they did? In college, I took my first formal class in Bible history, and loved every minute of it. It taught me to look at the Bible as a whole and to look deeper into the historical context of the stories and events.