So, I go to bed late, but I can't sleep. Sure enough 1:30 rolls around, so I disturb my sleeping wife to get up and go check on last night's shuttle launch. Took me awhile to find CNN (not my normal cup of tea, but they always show launches), and the launch was scrubbed till tonight at 1:10. Too bad, 'cause I'm not likely to be up late two nights in a row, tonight I'll be exhausted.

So I lay back down, but have trouble again. 3:30 rolls around, and this time Dawn is still awake too. We'll sleep tonight, no doubt. So I get up and see if Mars is hanging around.

Whoever started the rumour that Mars would be so visibly bigger in the sky is certainly no astronomer. During August, Mars is closer to earth than normal, so at times, I could see the red color. My eye sight is so bad, I usually can't see that. I got a clear disc in my telescope and that was nice. Looked at it from several magnifications. But the optics in my scope just show me a bright white disc, no red, no detail. Oh well.

I did see a pretty star cluster west of Orion. And I enjoyed listening to the owl hooting. I haven't heard him for awhile.

A friend recently lent me a newspaper article discussing a new "patriots" Bibe being published by Thomas Nelson. He asked me my opinion. The fact that we are Mennonite speaks of the reason he noticed this particular publication. However, as I read the article I was reminded of the multiplicity of Bibles that have hit the stands in the last two decades. Gone are the days when Schofield, Ryrie and Thompson were the standard offerings. They have been pushed aside by men's, women's, children's, girls, boys, singles, couples, skaters, rappers, yuppies, greenies, seekers, post-moderns, and a whole collection of study Bibles annotated by ministers who have "made it." The rash of specialized Bibles is humorous in one way and tragic in others.

Bibles highlighting so many topics is humorous because it is a transparent attempt to sell Bibles to people who already have them. I spoke to an 8 year old boy the other day who showed me four of his chidren's story Bibles in at least three translations. I can justify my own 30+ Bibles because I am a minister and "need" them for important ministry purposes. And yet, when I walk into a Christian bookstore I am inexorably drawn to the wall of Bibles to see what may be new. The packaging is as colorful and complex as the tote bags touted by any designer. We are moved to buy the Bible that fits our lifestyle ... this month. Individuals in our consumer driven society sees these books as something designed with them in mind ... a luxury that has only become possible in the wealthy west in the last half century, and yet seems so indispensable. Aside from the affluent, in the childhood years of our grandparents, a home might have had a single Bible. In the years of their grandparents, there might have been one per church.

And still such a variety and proliferation of Bibles is tragic. In spite of the fact that so many people in the world do not have Bibles and it is inexpensive and easy to provide Bibles for them, publishers know their continued prosperity depends on another binding, another perspective, another update to their revised translation.

And yet, for a few dollars (one tenth the cost of many designer Bibles) I can provide a Bible for a poor family in a remote place in their own language. That might even be the sexy thing for me to do in some circles. But how many people even know how to do such a thing? Ironically, if not for the sating of the particular appetites of we who are sometimes more hungry for a Bible than for the Word of God, the cost of a benevolent Bible might be significantly higher. I can only hope the prices we pay for our whims in some way subsidizes the desperate need of the spiritually endarkened.

The insertion of political viewpoints and agenda-driven dogmas into the Word of God amuses, saddens, and sometimes offends me. But I must remember that every popular pastor, speaker, evangelist or pundit who scribbles in their own "study notes" is doing the same thing on a theological level. Such "tools" serve to drive wedges between God's people, using God's word as a sledge. It is a proud tradition that goes back to Schofield who, by way of footnotes, indoctrinated many unwitting people in Dispensationalism. Right or wrong, the study notes in a Bible are seen by many as the final word on interpretation, more reliable than their own thinking or their pastor, who, after all, has never even been on TV and has certainly never written a Bible.