Owning books is a strange thing: you read a book and it becomes a part of you, so why keep it? Why re-read? Why buy when the library exists?
For me, I love going to the library, and knowing it's there in case I have a book I really want to read and can't pay for, or am not totally sure I want to read it, but want to give it a try - a temporary try.
Books that I really have loved I want to own. Sometimes I buy books just based on how they look. Sometimes if I have loved a book I want to have it on hand to share with other people.
I think I enjoy re-reading. I don't do it terribly often (with the exception of children's books) and I think I ought to do it more. There is always the push-pull of the desire to read new books and the desire to relive forgotten ones. So many books are out there to be read! And then again, so many books sit on my shelf as if they were never read, either because they were read when I was of a different reading/maturity level and had a different experience of them, because I read them hurriedly for school, or because they were read so long ago I have simply forgotten the words inside.
So I usually opt to not re-read. I figure I should move on to new books.
I recently started re-reading "The Pressure's Off" by Larry Crabb. Last year we read "The PAPA Prayer" for small group and it was pretty impacting and life changing. I read this one while I was at Taurenhoff for our one assigned book. I decided to re-read it because I remember close to nothing about it, and because I know Larry Crabb writes things I should read. Funny that I shouldn't remember any of this book because I'm pretty sure I wrote a paper on it.
Anyway, here is a tidbit I read today that I found poignant (if you find it depressing, I'll let you borrow the book and you can read the exciting, helpful stuff).
"The great tragedy in modern Christianity is that pools of living water are bubbling in the burning sand of our souls and we don't know it. We haven't dug deep enough through the debris of our self-deception, through the strategies we carefully follow to make life work, to drink from the divine stream within. We're drinking polluted water and thinking it's pure. Worse, we're feeling refreshed"
For me, I love going to the library, and knowing it's there in case I have a book I really want to read and can't pay for, or am not totally sure I want to read it, but want to give it a try - a temporary try.
Books that I really have loved I want to own. Sometimes I buy books just based on how they look. Sometimes if I have loved a book I want to have it on hand to share with other people.
I think I enjoy re-reading. I don't do it terribly often (with the exception of children's books) and I think I ought to do it more. There is always the push-pull of the desire to read new books and the desire to relive forgotten ones. So many books are out there to be read! And then again, so many books sit on my shelf as if they were never read, either because they were read when I was of a different reading/maturity level and had a different experience of them, because I read them hurriedly for school, or because they were read so long ago I have simply forgotten the words inside.
So I usually opt to not re-read. I figure I should move on to new books.
I recently started re-reading "The Pressure's Off" by Larry Crabb. Last year we read "The PAPA Prayer" for small group and it was pretty impacting and life changing. I read this one while I was at Taurenhoff for our one assigned book. I decided to re-read it because I remember close to nothing about it, and because I know Larry Crabb writes things I should read. Funny that I shouldn't remember any of this book because I'm pretty sure I wrote a paper on it.
Anyway, here is a tidbit I read today that I found poignant (if you find it depressing, I'll let you borrow the book and you can read the exciting, helpful stuff).
"The great tragedy in modern Christianity is that pools of living water are bubbling in the burning sand of our souls and we don't know it. We haven't dug deep enough through the debris of our self-deception, through the strategies we carefully follow to make life work, to drink from the divine stream within. We're drinking polluted water and thinking it's pure. Worse, we're feeling refreshed"
3 comments:
Ha, when I started reading this post I thought, huh, that cover looks mildly familiar, I must have seen that book around her house or something.
I had no idea we read it at Taurenhof until you said that. Don't remember a thing about it.
wow that's a powerful quote though!
need to remember that quote. very true. I think maybe Satan not only blinds the lost but also blinds the believer into living a life far less than what he could live. I really want to live Jn 10:10.
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