If you lived to be 80 years old and read one book per day, you would read 29,240 books (this figures in an extra day for every leap year). This would only equate to .075% of the over 39 million books in the Library of Congress. That doesn’t include the millions of maps, manuscripts, digital material, and a host of other things which brings the total number of items to over 164 million. And to think that it all started on this day in 1800 with a presidential allocation of $5,000 to purchase the seed books that would start this mammoth library.
President John Adam authorized the beginnings of the Library of Congress. It was created as an aid to Congress itself, giving them resources for study. Ironically, books were ordered from London and arrived in 1801. By 1802, they were catalogued. In total, 964 books and nine maps were the beginnings of the library.
“On the evening of August 24, 1814, during the second year of the War of 1812, British forces under orders from Rear Admiral George Cockburn and Major General Robert Ross set fire to the unfinished United States Capitol in Washington, D.C. The British also torched other public buildings in the capital city in retaliation for what they perceived as excessive destruction by American forces the year before in York, capital of upper Canada.
“The congressional library, then housed in the Capitol’s north wing, was destroyed. To “replace the devastations of British Vandalism,” former U.S. president Thomas Jefferson offered to sell his personal collection of books, the largest and most comprehensive in the United States at that time. With some reservations, Congress purchased his library for $23,950 in 1815.”1 There were 6,487 books in Jefferson’s collection!2
On December 24, 1851, a fire broke out in the Library of Congress. By this time, the library housed over 55,000 volumes. Two-thirds of that collection was destroyed, leaving approximately 18,000 books undamaged.
Today, the massive Library of Congress might be more aptly termed the Libraries of Congress. It is housed in three buildings: the Thomas Jefferson Building (10 1st Street SE), the James Madison Memorial Building (101 Independence Avenue SE) and the John Adams Building (2nd Street SE, between Independence Avenue and East Capitol Street).3
That’s NOTHING compared to what our Bibles could look like if God had chosen to give us everything He could. John 21:24-25 says, “This is the disciple which testifieth of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true. (25) And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen.” That would be an ENOURMOUS library!
This should cause us to be even more fascinated with our Bibles. Out of a library that could have filled the world, the Lord condensed what we needed to know down to one book containing 66 books, 1,189 chapters, and 31,102 verses. The average Bible that doesn’t have study notes is about 900 pages long. That’s like reading 2 ½ of the USA Today best-sellers. I say that only to point out that some people will read that many novels in a week or two. Therefore, reading our Bible cover to cover is more than 
doable!
It was said that it wasn’t unusual to see Thomas Jefferson sitting in the middle of the floor, pouring over 20 different books at once. His voracious appetite for learning shouldn’t compare to the Christians hunger and thirst for the Word of God.
God has condensed the wonders of all He could have written into a Book that we can easily carry with us wherever we go. And there is no way to ever learn all that that one glorious Book has to teach us. May we apply ourselves today to the study of God’s amazing Bible.
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1https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/out-of-the-ashes/online-exhibition.html
2https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/jefferson/jefflib.html
3https://washington.org/visit-dc/library-of-congress-washington-dc
