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On Wednesday, August 8, 2007, Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson recognized the Rev. Marcus J. Miller, president of Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Columbia, South Carolina, to lead the 2007 ELCA Biennial Churchwide Assembly to Dwell in the Word. 

Pr. Miller told of finding the Thomson Chain Reference Bible that had belonged to his father-in-law. He had wondered what to do with it. He noticed the wear on the edges of the pages of the Psalms and gospels. It had been given to his father-in-law by a confirmation class on the same day Pr. Miller had, himself, been confirmed: Pentecost Sunday, 1959.

...he was reminded how the Word sustains him and others in daily life.

Pr. Miller said the Bible now occupied a place on his desk and he continued to use it for his own personal devotion. He said it reminded him he was never by himself in his reading; he was reading the Word with his deceased father-in-law, just as he was still reading it with those with whom he had shared it in many settings over the years. Through this Bible he was reminded how the Word sustains him and others in daily life.