It was in France that a salesman offered a Bible as a gift to a family. The head of the family accepted it, but he immediately tore a dozen pages out of the Bible and lit his pipe with them. The salesman went away disappointed and sad.
A few years later, he again came into this region and called at the same house. During the war, this family had lost a son, and his few belongings had just arrived. Among his possessions was also a Bible. The salesman took it in his hand and saw that it was the very same Bible he once gave to the family and from which the pages had been torn out.
The fallen soldier had written in the back of the Bible the following: “Despised and scoffed at, but finally believed. Through it I was saved.”
ML-06/10/2018