THE BIBLE IN MY LIFE July 23, 2007 Issue

THE COLONEL AND THE BIBLE

WALT RODGERS

"HAVE YOU READ THE BIBLE all the way through?" The colonel's question to me was as stiff as the starch he must have used on his shirts when a cadet at the US Military Academy at West Point. Once a soldier, now a Christian Science practitioner and teacher, he brooked no nonsense.

I'd come to see the colonel in his office to ask for help. I felt I was slipping steadily into deep depression, after losing two young sons in divorce proceedings and being pretty much cut off from them by the distance of an entire continent. His inquiry was more like an order to a junior officer than a question.

I told him I read the weekly Christian Science Bible Lessons, but confessed I'd never read the Bible in its entirety. He then wrote down my "marching orders": "Read all of the book of Job, then the New Testament, then the Old Testament." (I still have his written instructions from our first get-together, in his disciplined cursive.)