From time to time, Shirley and I like to visit one of those mega book stores offering club memberships, complete with coffee bar and stocked with puzzles, games and all sorts of things associated with reading. Books tend to get me excited like shotguns, nine irons and torque wrenches do other guys.
But when you walk into one of these stores, there they are - row upon row upon row. Shelf after shelf after shelf. Books! Every conceivable subject and some inconceivable! Vegetable gardening, flower gardening, square foot gardening, travel (to anywhere), cooking (pasta, beef, barbecue, low fat, low carb, low cal), world history, ancient history, American history, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, novels (of every ilk), science, science fiction, Scientology, and, yes, even golf, guns and garage mechanic. You get the idea.
The thought always comes to me when I’m standing in the midst of all those titles: “Where should a person begin reading?” If I’m, say, a young person just starting to wake up to life, what books should I pick to read? Which ones are “an absolute must?” Which ones are “worth your while?” Which ones “a waste of time?”
Certainly, numerous books are worth our while, and many are must reads. But there is still only one book which is an absolute necessity! That would be the Bible, the collection of God’s sacred writings. In no other volume can we find the truths about life, death and the hereafter. About our beginnings and the planned end. About God and us. About the vicious battle raging between good and evil. About Jesus Christ who came to rescue us from Satan and the power of death. No other book contains these truths - period!
God authored only one Book, and it is a perennial best seller. I wonder, however, if it is a perennial best read? How many people own a copy of God’s book but have never read it cover to cover even once? Can you imagine? The only book which tells us about all of those “life and death” topics lies closed on the shelf. Imagine that.