One Book to Make Time For

Picture this:

You have been unemployed for months. Just when you thought your house, car, and pet turtle were all going to be repo’ed by the evil bill collector, you are saved from your fate by unexpectedly landing a job. On your first day at work, your boss sidles over to you and tosses a floppy manual on your desk. “This covers everything you need to know to keep this job,” he advises. “Read it.”

Do you read it? Cover to cover?

OK, now try this one:

You are young, single, and now madly in love with the most wonderful person, who suddenly has to leave town for a compelling reason (let’s say cross-continental job transfer, or short-term missions trip, or to care for a close relative in a health crisis). Weeks pass and you find that “tweets” are not the next best thing to being there. The absence is becoming unbearable to you, when one day, you open your mailbox and find a thick envelope stuffed with several hand-written pages from the very one you are missing so much.

Do you read it? Word for word?

What about this:

You lose someone you love very much—an older, respected family member who has been your closest mentor, maybe a parent or grandparent—and while you are still in mourning, one of your siblings or cousins mentions finding this wonderful stash of material—private notes, journals, scrapbooks. Your loved one evidently not only meticulously kept a journal over the years, but also turned out to be one of those unobtrusive millionaires-next-door. Today, the family is gathering to read what has been left behind. You get the chance to see what you really meant to the one who mattered so much to you.

Do you read it? Do you look for your name?

What books feed your life?

Leviticus. Tedious?

Song of Songs. Too mushy?

The Testaments. Too long?

I find it incredible that there are people who consider themselves Christians but have yet to take the opportunity to read—cover to cover—the very volume that provides them direction in the duties of Life, inspiration from the One who Loves them, and riches from the last will and Testament that is their legacy.