A Bible Without Speedbumps: The ESV Reader's Bible

I have long sought (and agitated for) a Bible without verse numbers and footnotes.  My prayers have finally been answered.

Crossway has released the ESV Reader's Bible, a small hardback edition with no speedbumps.  There are no section summaries, no verse numbers, no footnotes.  The chapter numbers are present, but in an unobtrusive way. It is incredible for interpretive reading: I just read what's there, and the flow carries me.

It restores the flow, which is something that I, as a reader, had been missing. It is everything I hoped it would be.

It would just figure that since I first dreamt of such a Bible, I've since fallen in love with the flow of the Holman Christian Standard Bible, doesn't it?

Power, corrupted

A god with infinite power is driven by something. God help us if it isn't love.
The atheist believes in power granted temporarily in an eddy of entropy, to be gathered back to nothingness as nothing usable. All power eventually gathered back into the hands of unchangable, unchanging weakness. This is the folly of America's war on poverty: she gives power to the powerless, who spend it on weakness, and return it to her, diminished. This is the metaphor of master and bondservant, that the master gives something to be grown and prospered, and by it both servant and master are enriched. This is the blasphemy of communism, that the government is the god, the sun, which burns out trying to prove its love, saying, "rely on me for life, I will gather you unto me and feed and shelter you," when she cannot forever. This is the rebellion, that a finite thinker believes himself to be smarter than Logos, more caring than Love, and through these, to be more worthy of His great might that never fails than He whose it has been forever.