In the huge scheme of things, bookmarks do not play a very important role. People often fuss about a mislaid book but does anyone fuss about a mislaid bookmark? Any old scrap will do for a bookmark, a scribbled-out shopping list, a bird’s feather picked off the window of the car, a spare lolly-paper. A busy reader will ditch protocol for immediate comfort.
The bookmark’s exalted cousin, the book, is another matter. It is written, re-written, updated, covered, criticised, applauded, reviewed, discussed, defamed, disputed, distributed, copyrighted, black-marketed, or burned to extinguish a culture.
But bookmarks? Who cares? Have you ever heard of an updated bookmark, a reviewed bookmark, or even a burned-to-extinguish-a-culture bookmark?
What intrepid little battlers they are, outlasting any old thumbed-out volume.
However, did you know that a bookmark can suspend thought indefinitely? It will hold your mind to the full-stop where you stopped thinking and take you back to the same moment a day, a week, yes, even a decade later.
Not only so, their one-liners can rock the foundations of belief. My bookmark has the most potent screamer I have ever heard. I do not know who the author is but I hope he got a Knighthood or a clap of thunder or something. He said, ‘It doesn’t take much of a man to be a Christian but it takes all there is of him.’
And God inscribed on stone that if I love him with all there is of me, He will show love to my children for a thousand generations (See Exodus 20, verse 6, NIV).
So don’t mess with bookmarks. If you do, they will hound you for the rest of your life and travel in and out of every page of your personal history. Mine does so I keep it right on that promise.
Elizabeth Price