Reading is a Glorious Gift

Today’s reading: Psalm 92:12-15

Reading today is too often considered a chore best avoided. And it seems The World is content to appease that attitude. Even the publishing world. A few days ago, in fact, I heard on the radio that many authors these days have entirely given up on the traditional novel and are “writing” audio books instead.

As I observe this trend, I sometimes question my teenage passion. A great high school English teacher inspired me perhaps too much,  and I went on to major in the subject in college, where I learned the thankless craft of trying to inspire others to love reading and writing. I get too excited these days by the great  American writers Ms. Pete taught me to love — particularly Mark Twain and David Henry Thoreau, but there are many others, including John Updike, Robert Frost, Emily Dickenson, Herman Melville and even Abraham Lincoln. And I know plenty of others who say that makes me a at least a little “weird.”

Today’s World has little patience for well-crafted prose and poetry. Those folks I mentioned are all too difficult to understand! Most “readers” today would rather just wait around for the film versions of their works (or, if pressed by a teacher, they’ll just go with whatever Wikipedia says).   It does little good for me to tell people that, say, the recently released movie “The Great Gatsby” ignores a lot of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s most salient, interesting points.

And when I consider that many of these writers were even under-appreciated during their own days (Thorough and Dickenson are listed prominently on several internet lists of “writers who became famous posthomously”), I often question my media of choice. Are reading and writing really as ineffective, as big of a waste, as they seem? People don’t even like to read The Bible, these days, right?

Today’s reading helps me rid my thoughts of all this negativity. It reminds me that my love of reading comes from the very sap that flowed through these great authors, even in their old age.

“The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God. In old age they still produce fruit; they are always green and full of sap,”

Because of this sap, the fruit of these glorious labors, even if unappreciated by the masses, lives on in me. And my love of their work has inspired me to produce as well. So God promises my writing will live on too. (And I will never again apologize for being too “sappy.” Ha!)

There is one condition to the great news of that last paragraph, however. It’s there in that second sentence of today’s reading, which is important enough to type again, “They are planted in the house of the Lord; they flourish in the courts of our God.”

To assure I’m doing my part to keep this heavenly sap flowing, I must always be sure that the reading and writing I do is, indeed, inspired by God. That means I must do a lot of wading through some very challenging ideas.  (People like Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, John Wesley, and C.S. Lewis are not known for their easily mastered works. Well, I suppose much of Lewis’ is, but he usually dives deeper than advertised .) And after I’ve returned from these swims, I must take seriously Paul’s advice in Thessolonians: “Test all things; hold fast to that which is good.”  God’s word, as written in The Bible, will be my measure.  And the writing it inspires will be my eternal fruit.

Thanks be to God for the blessed art of writing and the glorious gift of  languages that make reading possible. May my own sap stay forever green in these heavenly pursuits.