Once we encounter Scripture, we are changed forever. But what if the verse that marked your life had not been translated for you? Around the world, nearly 1.4 billion people have yet to read the Bible in their heart language*. 

This month, Seed Company’s Marked Campaign is highlighting how Bible translation is closing that gap, changing lives no matter where, ensuring all people have access to all Scripture – reading, rereading, underlining, and bookmarking God’s Word in their own language.

What We Mark Matters

It’s in our nature to mark events. After my dad’s final round of radiation, he rang a bell that echoed down the hall – a physical imprint of a finished, internal work. 

We mark time, too. Birthdays and anniversaries. Vacations and holidays. Otherwise, we risk forgetting, passing by monumental days without so much as a thought.

In Joshua, God has the Israelites mark the land to remember a miracle. Leading with the Ark of the Covenant, the Israelites pass through the dry riverbed of the Jordan River. God gives Joshua further instructions: select one man from each tribe to gather a stone from the middle of the riverbed and to place each one at their next encampment. 

Joshua relays this to the men: 

“We will use these stones to build a memorial. In the future, your children will ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ Then you can tell them, ‘They remind us that the Jordan River stopped flowing when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant went across.’ These stones will stand as a memorial among the people of Israel forever” (Joshua 4:6–7, NLT).

The implication is sobering: Not even a miracle is unforgettable. Without that monument, the memory of God’s faithfulness could fade. 

What Has Marked You? Why We Underline Scripture 

We each have stones of remembrance. Promises of God that comforted us in times of trial. Passages we underline, highlight, annotate, and return to. 

The Scripture we mark has marked us. It reminds us that God has led us through difficult times, and He will do so again. 

Digital Bibles are an incredible resource, making God’s Word accessible to a wide group of people. But when it comes to remembering Scripture, most of us sense that a verse we’ve underlined sticks differently than one we scroll past. Science is starting to agree.

• Paper may help us understand. A review of 54 studies from 2000 to 2017 found people generally comprehend more of what they read on paper than on screens. 
• Slowing down helps us hold on. Reading expert Maryanne Wolf says “deep reading”—not skimming—helps our brains store content.
• Handwriting wakes up the brain. A 2024 study found that handwriting, unlike typing, increased connectivity among brain regions associated with learning and memory. A pen in the margins—underlining and annotating—may be doing something a thumb on a screen can’t.

What you mark reminds you what you think is important. Every underline, margin note, and dog-eared page in your Bible is a stone of remembrance set where you’ll find it again. A reminder of what God has done, and will do.

But what if you didn’t have those stones to remind you? 

What Happens When We Forget

In Joshua 4, God tells His people to make a mark to remember. He doesn’t leave our memories to chance. 

In The Confessions, Augustine likens memory to a palace with countless chambers chock-full of treasures. This is where “losing your memory” makes a lot of sense. Somewhere in that palace are corridors with mathematical equations, friends’ birthdays, or old home addresses. I just lost track of where I put them. 

But those rooms contain more than trivia. Sometimes, losing what we remember is a bit like losing who we are. 

As they prepare to enter the Promised Land, Moses warns the Israelites: “Take care lest you forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his rules and his statutes” (Deuteronomy 8:11, ESV). 

Moses isn’t worried about Israel forgetting a fact. You can’t “forget God” the way you forget your keys or a math equation. 

He’s worried they will forget who God is, who they are in relation to Him, and what He has done for them. Moses is saying that to disobey God is to act like you forgot Him.

You can’t separate memory from action. What you remember influences what you do. In Joshua, the stones of remembrance are doing real work: they make God’s faithfulness easy to remember and hard to forget, reminding His people who they truly are.

Remembering is to Act

This is why marking your passages is so vital: memory is more than simply retaining information. To remember is to act, to carry a past example of God’s faithfulness into the present uncertainty. 

At the Last Supper, Jesus tells His disciples, “Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19, NLT). The bread and the cup act like the stones in Joshua: physical reminders of a past deliverance.

In a letter to Timothy, Paul writes, “Always remember that Jesus Christ, a descendant of King David, was raised from the dead. This is the Good News I preach” (2 Timothy 2:8, NLT). Remembering isn’t privately retaining information. It’s something you proclaim, a story you tell others about who God is and what He has done for you. 

The gospel, like the stones of remembrance, leads future generations to ask: “What does that mean?” It’s up to us, as Moses told the Israelites, not to forget the Lord our God.

Bible Translation & the Verses That Mark Us

All of this leads us back to the very beginning: in our Bibles, we can underline, highlight, study, and annotate the Scriptures. We can mark up the verses that have marked our lives. In doing so, our Bibles are monumental: pages filled with landmarks, stones of remembrance, reminders of who we are in Christ. 

We make our mark lest we forget.

What verse has stayed with you? Something you have read, reread, marked. How does it remind you of who you are? 

Now, imagine that verse had never been translated for you.

It’s easy to forget that for nearly 1.4 billion people around the world, that is their reality. They are waiting to read, reread, and mark God’s Word in the language they know best.

This giving season your gift supports Bible translation so that someone else can underline the verses that mark their life – and, one day, tell their children what those lines mean.

Scripture has marked you. To remember properly is to act. So pass it on.

*ProgressBible Data, October 2026