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I Grew Up in Church and I Know Every Story. At 54, I Still Couldn't Tell My Granddaughter What Leviticus Was For.

I've been in church since I was four, and I'd never finished one book of the Bible. My old Sunday school teacher read me one verse at her kitchen table, and I finally understood why every plan I started died in the same place.

By Karen W.

Reader contributor, Georgia

Published November 4, 2026

Listen to this article · 12 min

That's my granddaughter Lily on my couch in March. She's nine. She'd finished her picture Bible, so she reached over and picked up mine off the side table. It fell open where my bookmark was, in Leviticus, because that's where I'd quit in January. She read a few lines about goats and blood out loud, and then she looked at me and asked, "Mimi, why does God want all these rules?"

I've been in church since I was four years old, and I didn't have an answer for her. If you love Jesus and know every story in the Bible, and you still can't finish one book of it, I want you to know that isn't a lack of faith, and you aren't slow. It took my old Sunday school teacher one verse in 1 Corinthians to show me what I'd been missing. After that it took me two more weeks to do anything about it.

I got my first Bible when I was four

It's white with gold edges and my name stamped on the front. Mama gave it to me at Easter, and I still have it in a box in the guest room with my Sunday school pins and a blue ribbon from a memory verse contest I won in third grade.

And I know the stories, I want to say that first. Noah and the ark, Jonah, David and Goliath, Daniel in the lions' den. I could tell you every one of them with the felt board pictures in my head. I've sung in the choir, I've taught Vacation Bible School, and I've loved Jesus as long as I can remember.

But I'd never read one whole book of the Bible start to finish and understood what it was about. Every January I'd start a Bible in a year plan. I'd sail through Genesis because I knew the stories, get through Exodus on the parts I remembered from the movie, and then hit Leviticus and stop. Every year. My bookmark would sit there till Easter and then I'd feel too guilty to look at it. The anxiety started every time I walked past it.

So I did more, like everybody tells you. I bought a study Bible with the notes at the bottom, and I'd read one note about one verse and lose the whole chapter. I put a Bible app on my phone, and ten minutes after I opened it I'd be on Facebook looking at my cousin's grandbabies. I watched overview videos on the TV in the den, and they were good, but by the time I got upstairs to my Bible I'd forgotten half of it. I joined the Wednesday women's study. Read more, pray more, try harder. I did all of it, and I still couldn't tell you what Leviticus was for.

The night Lily asked me about the rules

So there I was on the couch with a nine-year-old looking at me. I said, "Well, honey, that's how they did things back then." She looked at me a second longer than I liked and went back to her picture Bible. That's all it was. It took about ten seconds.

I didn't sleep that night. I lay there with my anxiety going, thinking fifty years in church and I couldn't answer a nine-year-old. I felt like a fake. I kept praying, Lord, I love You, I've always loved You, so why can't I understand Your book? And I felt like Jesus must be tired of me asking.

Around one in the morning I typed into my phone, why can't I understand the Bible when I grew up in church. There were pages of people saying my exact thing.

Under the Bible reading threads that came up, people wrote:

• I can read every word but I really don't know what it means.
• I always tap out at Leviticus in a one year study plan but eventually pick up.
• Today, I wanted to study and learn more about God. The problem was that I had no idea where to start.

The second one was me exactly, except I never did pick up. Then I found one comment on a thread called I feel like I'm reading a different book than everyone else, and I read it three times. Five people had liked it. I didn't understand yet why it felt so right.

What Miss Evelyn read me over coffee

That Sunday after church I drove out to Miss Evelyn's. She taught my fourth grade Sunday school class, she's 81 now, and she still sits on the third pew every Lord's Day. I told her about Lily and the couch and the bookmark, and how anxious I'd been ever since, and I braced for her to tell me to read more.

She didn't. She cut me a piece of pound cake, opened her old King James to 1 Corinthians, and read me the second verse with her finger under every word.

She tapped the page and said, "Karen, honey, you're reading somebody else's mail." Then she ate her cake and let me sit.

I worked it out at her table. Paul wrote that letter to a real church in a real city that was fussing with itself, and every word in it was for people who knew what had been going on. Every book in there was written by somebody, to somebody, about something that had happened. I'd been opening them in the middle with no idea whose mail I had. Later I found somebody on that same thread who'd put the Sunday school part plainly.

"The Sunday-school version is almost all rescue and warmth. The text itself is also holiness, judgment, covenant, blood, and a God who will not shrug at evil."

Grandmama's letters in the shoebox

The only way I know to explain it is Grandmama's shoebox. When I was twelve I found it in her closet, full of letters Granddaddy wrote her from Korea. I pulled one out and read it, and it said the rain had finally quit and Tommy was walking again. It meant nothing to me. Who was Tommy? What rain?

Then Mama sat down on the bed with me and told me the envelope. Where he was when he wrote it. That Tommy was his best friend, who'd been hurt the month before. That it had rained for three weeks and they'd been stuck in a trench the whole time. Same letter, same words, and I read it again and cried.

That's what I'd been doing with the Bible for fifty years. I'd been reading the letters and never once looking at the envelopes.

Everything I'd tried was either more letter, or the envelope kept somewhere I wasn't. The study notes explained one verse at a time and never told me what the whole book was for. The videos were downstairs on the TV. The app was one tap from Facebook. Nothing I owned put the envelope right there on the page before the book, where I'd see it when I opened my Bible. None of that was my faith.

Fifty years went by like that

Somebody on one of those threads wrote, "I used to try to read through Bible. Tried it various times and failed around Leviticus." That was me for as long as I've had a Bible of my own, anxious every January and quiet about it every Sunday. And Lily is nine, and she's watching her Mimi carry a Bible to church every Sunday and quit it every January, and I don't want her thinking that's what loving Jesus looks like.

I'd been reading the letters for fifty years and never once looked at the envelopes.

The envelope first, then the book

So I didn't need a different Bible, and I didn't need to try harder. I needed the envelope before every book. One page I could read in a few minutes that told me who wrote it, what it covers, and what the pictures in it mean, so when I turned to chapter one I'd know whose mail I was holding.

That's how Mama did it with Granddaddy's letters too. She gave me the envelope, and then the letter could talk.

When I said that to Miss Evelyn, she laughed and reached past the cake plate for a little brown book next to her Bible. It had a ribbon hanging out of it. Her daughter gave it to her this spring, she said, and she's taught Sunday school for the Lord for sixty years and she reads it before every book now.

Miss Evelyn's, open on her kitchen table after church.

Every Bible help I'd ever bought was made to explain verses, and the envelope was always somewhere else. Somebody on r/Bible wrote that what helped most was "short introductory videos for each book to explain what the book is about and how it is structured." Mine were downstairs on the TV. Miss Evelyn's was right there on the page next to her Bible.

Then she turned it to Leviticus

She opened it to Leviticus and slid it over to me. The right page told me who wrote it, what it covers, what the imagery means, and it closed with a short summary of the whole book. The left page was blank for my own notes. I read it in about four minutes. Then I opened her Bible to Leviticus 1, and for the first time in my life I knew what I was reading and why it was there. I thought about Lily on the couch, and I whispered thank You, Jesus, right there at her table.

Close-up of one spread.

It has one of those spreads for every one of the 66 books, in order, so you can keep it next to your Bible and read the one page before you start the book. It's called Return Address.

I looked it up when I got home. It's a hardcover with a brown faux-leather cover and a ribbon bookmark, small enough to sit on top of my Bible on the nightstand. It comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee.

"Isn't that what a study Bible is for?" Mine has an introduction before each book too. It's three pages of tiny print, and I skipped it every single time. This is one page, and it sits open next to my Bible while I read.

"Does it replace my Bible?" No. It's the envelope. I still read every chapter in my own Bible, and I still pray before I start.

"Does it explain every verse?" No, and I'm glad. It's one page per book. When I want a verse explained, my study Bible is still right there.

"Is the print small?" It is, and I won't pretend otherwise. I keep my readers tucked in it at the ribbon.

It wasn't instant either. The first week I read the page for Leviticus three times and still didn't open the book. Then one morning I read the page, turned to chapter one, and kept going, and I haven't stopped since.

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What other people wrote

From Amazon and Reddit, in their own words

What my Wednesday mornings are like now

It's about 6:15 on a Wednesday. The coffee's going, and I've got my Bible open on the nightstand with the little brown book open beside it. I read the one page first, and I write a line or two on the blank side. Then I read the chapter and pray it back to Jesus, and I know who's talking and who they're talking to. The anxiety I used to feel opening my Bible isn't there anymore. By the time I get to the women's study that night, I'm the one with a question worth asking.

Before

Now

Lily stayed over again last month. She asked about the rules again, and this time I got the guide off the nightstand and we read the Leviticus page together on the couch. I told her God was teaching His people how to live close to Him, and she said, "Oh," and asked if we could do Numbers next. I went to bed with a peace I can't even explain. That can be your nightstand the week yours comes.

What I paid, and why

I'd rather pay for one page before every book than buy one more thing that lives on my phone. It comes as Keep One, Give One right now, two guides together, and the second one is for the person you already thought of while you were reading.

Don't put it next to a big commentary. Put it next to what you already have.

	One page per book	Who wrote it	Room for notes	Off your phone
A Bible in a year plan	No	No	No	Some
A Bible app	Some	Some	Yes	No
My study Bible's notes	Several pages	Yes	Margins	Yes
Return Address	Yes	Yes	A blank page	Yes

It isn't for you if you want every verse explained, or if you need big print. If that's you, there's one more thing about the second guide, and I'll tell you under the price.

Miss Evelyn's daughter gave her one, so I gave my second one to Lily's mama. She's 31 and she's never finished a book of the Bible either. Now when Lily stays over, she brings her mama's copy and we compare notes on the blank pages.

Or you could close this, walk past your Bible on the nightstand tonight, and tell yourself you'll start again in January. I did that for fifty years, and in that version the second one never gets given. You know who they are, and they're sitting on a bookmark in Leviticus right now thinking they've let Jesus down.

I gave it fifty years. I'm only asking you for sixty days, and I'll be praying the Lord gives you His peace every time you open His Word.

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The questions I had

If you've got a bookmark sitting in Leviticus tonight, I'll be praying for you. Jesus is patient with us, and God is good.Karen W., Georgia

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