[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 153 (2007), Part 21]
[House]
[Pages 29410-29411]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                          NATIONAL BIBLE WEEK

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Rush) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. RUSH. Mr. Speaker, on the week of November 18 we begin to 
celebrate in this Nation National Bible Week.
  National Bible Week is the National Bible Association's signature 
event which is celebrated the week before Thanksgiving every year since 
it began in 1941.
  In this week, we encourage the citizens of this Nation to read the 
Bible. Mr. Speaker, I must admit that I was not always an ardent Bible 
reader. I was always in and around the church, but as so many of us who 
belong to church, I was in the church, but church wasn't in me.
  Mr. Speaker, I came to this Congress in 1993 and almost immediately 
upon my presence here I received a Bible similar to this given by Rev. 
Dr. D. James Kennedy. And, Mr. Speaker, I found my evenings alone, my 
wife and

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my family back in Chicago, and somehow I had a prompting to pick up the 
Bible and to read the Bible. I must admit, Mr. Speaker, that although I 
wasn't an ardent reader, now I'm a ferocious reader of the Bible, 
avaricious in my interests in terms of the words recorded in God's 
living book.
  Mr. Speaker, I must say that I have been renewed as a man by the 
renewing of my mind according to the dictates and the Spirit that's 
incorporated in the reading of the Bible. I am a changed man; I am a 
new man. I don't have the same friends I used to have. I don't walk the 
same way; I don't talk the same way, and it's all because of this 
Bible.
  Mr. Speaker, I am an activist, and for years I had shunned this Bible 
because it didn't speak to my activism. And then the Holy Spirit spoke 
to me through my conversations and through my interests in reading the 
Bible. And, Mr. Speaker, I came across a Scripture that really moved 
me, two, as a matter of fact. One is taken from the Old Testament, 
Micah 6:6-8: ``With what shall I come before the Lord and bow myself 
before the high God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 
calves a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of ram, 
10,000 rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, 
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?''
  The Lord answers, ``He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what 
does the Lord require of you? But to do justly, to love mercy and to 
walk humbly with your God.''
  Mr. Speaker, in those words, it encapsulated all that I had attempted 
to be, my activism, my love for humanity and my love for the Lord. Mr. 
Speaker, Luke 4 and 4:18: ``The spirit of the Lord is upon Me. Because 
He has anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor. He has sent me to 
heal the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and 
recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are 
oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.''
  Mr. Speaker, my life had been, and continues today, to be a 
reflection of the spirit that is within me, the Holy Spirit that is 
within me. I call on all good citizens, Christians and non-Christians 
alike, during this week and every week of the year, pick up your Bible. 
Read the Bible. You have no better friend. You have no better solution 
than what is recorded in these words.

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