A friend recently asked at large what techniques people use to study the scriptures. It made me think about all the different ways I’ve marked and studied my scriptures. I thought I’d write about the ways I mark my scriptures today. And I’ll do another post about different ways I’ve studied the scriptures later (to keep this one from getting too long).

The June 1995 edition of the New Era, right before my senior year of high school, was a special edition about the scriptures. One story in particular has stood out to me after all these years, a fiction piece titled, “The Books of Daniel.”

Your grade this semester depends on … the degree to which your beautiful, white Book of Mormon has become used. I want you to study it thoroughly – to write in the margins, to underline important verses, to read and re-read and wear it out with your searching. … I expect you … not to wear out the pages, but to read it, use it, and love it as I do.

My first scriptures have stick figures of the stories that my mom drew in that I colored (like scripture stickers, only better). And I’d color over any verse I liked with whatever color I happened to grab at the time. I drew the pictures in every set up through my mission. I can do a real good stick figure now.

Drawing and coloring the pictures was a great Sunday activity and I could find any story at a moment’s notice or tell you exactly what was on a particular page with just a glance at it. (Then I went to Brasil and the stories moved around and I’m not so good at telling you that the scripture you want is on the left hand page, right column, half-way down any more.) The missionaries in my MTC district called my scriptures my coloring book. But I definitely knew the basics of the scriptures.

For my Book of Mormon classes at BYU we were allowed to bring our scriptures into the tests. And if it was permanent in our scriptures (meaning it wasn’t just papers stuck inside the pages) we could use them on our tests. So I took all of my notes for that class in the margins of the pages. There are even a few extra pages glued in. Some of my classmates went out and bought the large print edition of the Book of Mormon so they could have bigger margins. That’s when I really started writing in the margins of my scriptures. I used different colored pens to underline different things.

My marking got a bit more planned as I prepared for my mission. I used six colors and drawn tabs down the side of the page to mark 27 different topics. Same basic idea as the pictures, only with a bit more grown-up feel. I can look at any page, see what tab is marked on that page, and tell you what topics the scriptures on that page are about. I could use the tabs to flip through the book and find scriptures on any topic I wanted. I received a very cool yellow highlighter in the MTC that I used to mark scriptures that were personally relevant to me.

The English set I took on my mission got moldy (because I left them in my suitcase for a year or so and used my Portuguese ones exclusively). So when I came home, after getting a real hamburger for lunch, we went and bought me a new set of scriptures, a quad (all the scriptures in one binding), the first time I’ve ever bought one of those. That’s the set I’ve been using for the last ten years.

In my current set I still use the same six colors from my mission, but I’m only marking six topics. The first three, Christ (red), the Plan of Salvation (orange) (creation, fall, atonement), and the Gospel (yellow) (faith, repentance, baptism, gift of the Holy Ghost), all are good standards to mark. The last three are ones that I really want to learn more about and that I seem to always need – Prayer (green), Covenants (blue), and people I want to be like (purple).

I also use various highlighters and colored pens to mean different things. I still use the same yellow highlighter from my mission to highlight scriptures that were written just for me. I’ve put post-it tabs on a few so I can flip right to them. I have a pink highlighter that I am using to mark all the direct words of God and Christ.

I still use a blue pen to write in the margins and draw connecting lines between ideas or underline important parts (with a ruler to help me get the underlines perfectly straight). And I’ve used a red pen to mark all the names of Christ in the Book of Mormon and all the Joseph Smith Translations in the Bible.

Right now I’m reading the Old Testament again to get all my marks in it. I’ve read it several times but not with my colored pencils and highlighters next to me the whole time. These scriptures are ten years old, they need to look as read as they are. Next I’ll be doing the same with the New Testament. Certain sections, like Isaiah and the Book of Mormon, already look well loved. I need the rest to reflect that as well.

I write in the margins. I underline important verses. I read and re-read and wear my scriptures out with my searching.

How do you mark your scriptures?