And may God bless us everyone.
Lynne Scanlon suggests we put a book in the pocket of pants we give to a poor family this Christmas.
This week as she stood in line at the local general store to buy her daily fix of Pepperidge Farm cookies, the Wicked Witch waited behind an older gentleman buying five Nascar toy cars. He told the cashier that he was buying them to contribute to a local organization donating holiday gifts to needy children. Why not a book with each car? Doesn’t this idea make good sense? As a young girl I used to love getting books for Christmas—especially if they were about horses. I’ve since graduated from horse crazy to just plain book crazy.
Thanks for pointing out just how selfish I am, and about what.
The thought of giving away a favorite children’s book of MINE…
I have favorite children it would be easier to give away.
heh, heh, heh. You’re welcome, and I understand. I would sooner hunt down a copy of that favorite book than give my actual copy, but I, we, need to hold these things loosely. If the Lord told us to choose ten books, apart from His Word, to keep and the rest would go into the world, we would do make the difficult decision and let the rest go. Wouldn’t we?
We mustn’t put off the surrender of our books by thinking the Lord will not ever ask us to do it or that He probably won’t. Just like the rich young man whom Jesus asked to give his wealth to the poor, the point isn’t that we actually give everything away. The point is our surrender to the Lord. Our books are not really our books. They are the Lord’s books; He owns everything. We are only stewards of his property. So if He moves His books to someone else’s stewardship . . .
This touches on the deep meaning in the Lord’s words, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
There’s a scrap of writing from C.S. Lewis’ pen that never found its way into a finished work, but is included (if I remember correctly) in GOD IN THE DOCK and one of his letters. In it he imagines standing before God in heaven and asking if he can have any of his earthly books.
God tells him he can have only those books in heaven that he lent to others. And all the places where they spilled drinks on them or left messy fingerprints will be transformed to gorgeous scriptorial illuminations.
Oh, I hope that is true. My beloved copy of “My Utmost for His Highest” looks like it has the Olympic symbol emblazened on it due to my husband using it as a coaster.
I prefer tattered books to new, which works nicely for me.