King James Version

Amazing Grace!  It sounds so sweet, and it saved a loser like me.  I used to be lost, but I was found, I was blind, but I can see now.

Grace is what taught my heart to fear God, and it also made my fears feel better.  That grace seemed so precious, the moment I first started believing.

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Those are the first two lines of Amazing Grace, "updated" to current language.  Doesn't sound so great any more.  We were singing Amazing Grace in church yesterday and it hit me how beautiful the language was in the song.  And how unlike our regular speech the language was.  Which made me think about the King James version of the Bible.

So many of us now use "updated" versions of the Bible, where the language used has been simplified from the older English to read and be more modern.  I do not intend for this post to be a treatise on why we should all be using the KJV Bible.  But, if you don't read this version with your children or even to yourself from time to time, you're missing some beautiful language and phrasing.  You're missing some unique vocabulary words as well as a pseudo history of the English language as you go to look up what some words used to mean.

It's just a thought.  We all have a KJV somewhere in our bookshelves.  Go wipe the dust off and read some beautiful language today.