God Wrote a Book

A red plastic sign perches near the base of one of the locust trees in our backyard, right next to the boards that scale its trunk, steps to a partially-completed tree house above.  The sign reads, “A Loveland Library Super Reader Lives Here.”  Our kids read so many minutes in the month of June that the librarian offered us six such signs, one for each of them.  “Line them up in your front yard,” she urged with a perky smile.  I balked.  “One’s enough,” I insisted.  Nor did I object when Leah decided to stake the sign in the backyard.

My children don’t get their love of reading from a stranger.  When I was a child, my favorite part of summer wasn’t swimming or little league games.  Our family didn’t go on a lot of vacations, so they weren’t a regular highlight, either.  I didn’t most anticipate fishing or biking down our gravel road.  I certainly didn’t long for corn detasseling to begin, though I appreciated the paychecks.  My favorite thing about summer was all the time I had to read.  I’d curl up on the rust-colored couch in our cool, quiet living room and make my way through book after book.  My mom took my siblings and I to the library regularly, and we’d exit with dozens of books at a time.

Now my children follow in those footsteps.  I designate one hour every day as “Quiet Time.”  I use that time to refill my sanity reserves.  My kids spend that hour reading or being read to.  When I’m finished reading aloud to them, I try to read a little myself.  A chapter here.  Several minutes from an audio book there.  Slowly I’m whittling away at my self-assigned “Summer Reading List,” but compared to what I read as a child, I read little now.  Other responsibilities that a family of eight entails take precedence.

But there is a book that must have priority over every other activity and responsibility.  That books is the Bible.  God’s book.  But it seems that especially in the summer we’re tempted to brush over Bible reading.  To skip family devotions because we’re on vacation or because it’s time for swimming lessons or another ballgame. 

In an online video, Pastor John Piper exclaims, “God wrote a book.  That reality blows me away every time I stop to think about it.  Pages and pages of God.  His thoughts, his words, his heart.  Right there, just a few inches away.  I can carry it with me everywhere I go, read it whenever I want…”

That’s the book concerning which God commanded Joshua, “Thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success” (Joshua 1:8).  It’s the book that was written for our learning, “that we through patience and comfort of the scriptures might have hope” (Rom. 15:4)   It’s no ordinary book:  it’s living “and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12).  It’s the book that keeps us from sin (Psalm 119:11).  It’s the book that we must study in order to show ourselves “approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth” (Tim 2:15).  It’s the book that Job esteemed more than his necessary food (Job 23:12).  Why?  Because to know this book is to know God.  To know this book is to have eternal life (John 17:3).

God wrote a book.  Is it on your summer reading list?