Mark It Up

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

When I was in my pre- and early teens, I had a subscription to a magazine called Young Ambassador. I have no idea if it's still in print or not, or who published it. It was a magazine with Christian content aimed at adolescents. I don't know how long I got it, and I have no memory of any of the content except for one series that ran when I was probably in the 7th grade that was about a Bible marking system, color coding verses with colored pencils. I had a nice Cambridge (King James Version) Bible, but I'd been underlining verses with whatever writing instrument was in my hand, and I was beginning to see that that would be a mess. Whole passages marked in random colors meant that nothing in them was significant anymore; it all blended back together. So I bought a little paperback Gospel of John and marked it up according to the instructions in the magazine.

But there were problems with it. It was difficult to read through some of the darker colors like blue and purple, and I didn't like the idea of carrying around a box of colored pencils with me everywhere. But I began looking, in a very low-key way, for a way to systematically mark the Bible.

My freshman year of college, I tried highlighters of different colors; they were easier to read through but it was hard to find a variety of colors. Plus, they were bulky and hard to carry around.

A readily available, easy transportable idea didn't really hit me until after that first year of college. A Bic 4-color pen was the answer. I figured out a meaning for each of the four colors used as an underline, and came up with a number of marginal symbols to expand on it. I wrote it out on a 3x5 card and carried it in my Bible until I had it memorized.

I can honestly say that my Bible comprehension increased dramatically when I started using that system. It made me pay attention to what I was reading to decide if and how I should mark the verse. And it made verses easy to find when I later wanted to check a reference.


Here's a sample of the system: the underlining and a few of the marginal symbols (that 'C' for 'Commands' is blue, as is the triangle symbol and the general underline; it doesn't look blue on my monitor...). Feel free to use it, adapt it, add symbols, change symbols, whatever. It's a tool that can be customized however you like. That's just how I use it. The Bic pens seem to be the best of the three or four different brands of 4-color pens I've tried; they're about $2.

And you know, years later I discovered that this is sort of an entry-level induction method. Kay Arthur's Inductive Bible Study method involves detailed outlining and marking the Bible on a word-by-word level. If you're already used to marking a Bible systematically, it's not a big jump to the very detailed Inductive method.

But I'm curious...does anyone else use a system (it could be vastly different from this one) to mark their Bible?