HOUSTON, TX - Multiple witnesses claim they've spotted Joel Osteen's personal Bible, shivering, hungry, and homeless, under a local freeway overpass begging for food and money.

Several claim the Bible was holding up a cardboard sign claiming it would exegete itself for food.

"The poor thing looks seriously neglected and abused," one woman said after handing a dollar bill out the window to the scrawny, homeless copy of the Scriptures. "It's so sad that even in God's chosen nation of America, our own Bibles sometimes go hungry out in the cold."

Osteen's Bible reportedly left his home in a daring escape over a year ago, but its inspiring story of liberation from abuse apparently doesn't have a happy ending. Hundreds of Houston locals have called in tips that they've seen the Bible sleeping in gutters, getting in brawls at train stations, and drinking away its sorrows at a local bowling alley bar with change collected from panhandling.

"It's really sad," a representative for a local homeless shelter said. "You see this from time to time: a Bible gets away from one of the prosperity guys in search of a better life, but it just doesn't know how to take care of itself out in the wild. The poor thing has just been mangled and twisted every which way."

At publishing time, the Bible was seen warming itself around a fire in a barrel along with the abandoned Bibles of Creflo Dollar, Benny Hinn, and Kenneth Copeland.