[imagesource: Getty Images / Aurora Creative]

So you’ve checked in, you’ve made it to your room, and you’re getting ready to do the standard room inspection.

The taps in the sink work, the mini bottles of shampoo and conditioner look sealed, and the TV has that weird limited DStv bouquet with some of the channels.

Come on, guys, fork out for the full range of channels so I can watch a film I’ve seen four times before on Movie Magic.

Oh, and there’s also a kettle, which you apparently shouldn’t use because people boil their undies in there to clean them.

There’s a decent chance you’ll also find a Bible in the bedside drawer, and the good news is that if you’re so inclined, you can take the Bible.

That’s as long as it’s a Bible placed there by Gideons International, an evangelical Christian organisation.

John Geare, a chaplain to the Gideons, actually says that one of the organisation’s “most fervent prayers was that people would steal the book”.

He adds that the organisation will replace it with another.

The Washington Post reports that between June 2018 and May 2019 alone, Gideons International donated more than 1,4 million Bibles to hotels around the world.

A little history lesson on how that all began:

The Nashville-based group started the tradition more than a century ago. As official history tells it, the genesis of the Gideons strikes a familiar religious theme: There was not enough room at the inn. Two men, John Nicholson and Samuel Hill, had to bunk in a double room at the overcrowded Central Hotel in Wisconsin in 1898.

They discovered their shared faith, decided to start an association of Christian traveling salesman, and, in 1908, the group adopted a plan to supply Bibles to every hotel room in the United States.

All in all, the organisation has distributed in excess of two-and-a-half billion Bibles and Testaments around the world in hospitals, prisons, schools, and hotels.

However, the need for a Bible in each room has dwindled greatly in the past few years, due in large part to the rise of smartphones and WiFi in hotels, meaning people can access scripture online.

Then there’s the fact that Millennials in places like the US are the least religious generation in history, and have no desire to see a Bible in the drawer.

Alastair Thomann, CEO of Generator and Freehand Hotels, said those chains don’t provide in-room Bibles because travellers “are so diverse, and we want our properties to feel inclusive of all varying beliefs and spiritual traditions.”

A fair point, well-made.

All in all, I guess if you really want to take that bedside Bible, you go ahead and do you.