MAKING THE BIBLE KNOWN

It was a regular afternoon in Cavite when Jia’s father asked her to wash the dishes. Eleven years old, phone in hand, she was deep into a video on her screen. Wait lang  (“in a while”) she said – and then forgot entirely. It wasn’t defiance. It was a distraction. For Jia’s family, that small moment had become a familiar one.

Over the summer, with no classes to fill her days, Jia’s phone became her default companion. Two to three hours of screen time slipped by easily – videos, mobile games, the endless scroll. Her parents set limits, and she didn’t fight them. But the moment the phone was back in her hands, everything else faded into the background. Chores waited. Conversations stalled. The family was in the same room but somewhere far apart.

That summer, their church held a Vacation Bible School –  and on May 26, the Philippine Bible Society’s Bible Engagement team came to visit. Before introducing the material, a PBS representative spoke to the congregation about what excessive screen time was quietly doing to children: delayed speech, weakened social skills, and strained eyesight. And the slow but sure, fraying of family relationships. It was a picture many parents in the room recognized. Then came the reason they were there.

The 100 Steps Family Bible, produced in cooperation with the Netherlands Bible Society, was designed to bring families back together around God’s Word: through stories, discussion questions, and arts and crafts activities that children could do with their parents. When Jia saw the book for the first time, she was curious. She wanted to know what was inside.

What caught her first were the colors – every page bright and illustrated, nothing like the Bibles she had seen before. Curiosity pulled her in, and the language kept her there. Written in a contemporary Pinoy version, the text spoke to her directly, for Jia, the familiar language made the stories alive, and not from a place far, far away.

That invitation quietly changed the rhythm of their home. Rather than waiting for a perfect, empty schedule that might never come – especially now that the school year has begun and Jia’s free time has shrunk – her family realized that time with God’s Word isn’t something you find. It’s something you choose. They began making that choice together: opening the book, working through the questions, making the crafts together, and letting the conversations go wherever they needed to go.

Jia’s father watched this unfold with quiet gratitude. In his own words: “Salamat sa donors dahil naging channel of blessing sila sa paggawa ng paraan para maging interesado ang bata sa Biblia dahil madali itong maintindihan at nakakaaliw dahil fully colored. Hindi lang bata nag-eenjoy, pati kaming magulang.” (Thank you to the donors for being a channel of blessing –  for finding a way to make children genuinely interested in the Bible. It’s easy to understand, and the colors make it fun to read. It’s not just the kids who enjoy it. We as parents do too.)

His gratitude runs deeper than a free book. He sees its true value – an opportunity. A chance to be part of something larger than one household in Cavite: a generation of children growing up knowing that the Bible is not something to fear or ignore, but something that belongs to them. Every family that opens these pages is preparing the ground. The seeds may be small, and the harvest may take years. But the seeds are live, and they are being sown now, in living rooms and kitchens, on ordinary evenings after school.

Because that is ultimately what the 100 Steps Family Bible is doing in homes like Jia’s. It is not simply replacing screen time with reading time. It is planting a foundation of faith – a love for God’s Word that grows as she does. It is a father and a daughter, in the bedroom after homework, working through questions together. Some she can answer. Some she can’t yet. But they keep opening the book, page by page, step by step; a routine that transforms a house into a home of faith.