Love of Books: Friend or Foe

“Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body.” (Ecclesiastes 12:12b) Oh, Solomon, how wise you are! I enjoy reading a handful of blogs these days that encourage me as a Jesus-lover, mom, wife, friend. Even better, I love to read real books with actual paper pages. I currently have about 13 books on my night side table in various stages of completion. Since my childhood, reading has been an enjoyment and passion of mine as part of being a thinking, feeling, dreaming, living person. Fast forward to recent years in my having-three-young-children-and-juggling-full-time-work stage, I spend significantly less time reading. Thankfully one of my intentional new life habits (known to others as new year’s resolutions) was to allow myself to reawaken the part of me that reads and thinks and dreams. And yet, there are different kinds of reading, aren't there? I can read for enrichment and pleasure, and I can read to gain information. I must admit, there can be a weariness in trying to soak in all the information at my fingertips. I was recently researching a topic that I had a strong personal interest in. I was eager to read what others who have gone before me had learned. I enjoyed finding books and blogs to satisfy my curiosity and “need” for information. But all the reading also exhausted me. Have you been there? Thrilled with the excitement of the chase of knowledge, and then plummeting into the numbing depths of a knowledge overload coma. In the midst of my search for information, I had to step back for a while and just live and let God speak to me for a time. His presence and words do not exhaust me. They energize me. There comes a point when more information is not what I need. What I need is more relationship, more living, more being. Take a deep breath, and today, no matter what you read, live!