A Bible Story Revisited

On this Good Friday eve, when according to the Biblical account Jesus shared with his disciples the Last Supper, I follow up the personal story from Jan. 21, 2021—buying with, and for, my wife the Thomas Nelson-published, Leathersoft “classic verse-by-verse, center-column, reference Bible” (New King James Version). Five days later, when an online video referred to Matthew 18:1, Anne asked about the narrative text being in red and Christ’s words in black. I looked. That’s not right.

So I perused and found that on some pages Jesus’ quotes were the expected “red letter”, while on others text was swapped black with the rest. Mmmm, what to do? I considered calling the Christian bookstore from where we purchased the Bible. But given how negatively SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome Coronavirus 2)/COVID-19 lockdowns have affected small businesses and being a printing error, I contacted the publisher.

Finding a phone number on the HarperCollins Christian Publishing website proved to be much easier than expected, given how many businesses compel customers to use chat, chatbots, or email. A representative clearly working from home (think pandemic-demanded call center) answered and was exceptionally helpful. I explained the problem, and she confirmed the known printing error but her surprise that the Bible shipped to the bookseller.

She offered to replace the Good Book—no charge and freely shipped—with additional instruction to keep the volume that we had when I asked about its return. The replacement Bible arrived about two weeks later.


I captured the Featured Image, today, using Leica Q2. Vitals, aperture manually set: f/2.8, ISO 2000, 1/125 sec, 28mm; 12:54 p.m. PDT. I uncharacteristically shot several photos—the first two at f/5.6. While considerably less text on the pages is within the depth of field, the f/2.8 portrait is my choice because the eye draws to Matt. 18:1.