A Good Read

I am currently reading a really helpful book called “Did You Think to Pray”, by Dr R.T. Kendall (Hodder and Stoughton, 2008). As its title suggests, it stresses the importance of prayer in the Christian life.

The writer is passionate and engaging on his subject and gives priority to prayer in his own life. As I read it, I hear a lifetime’s experience talking and feel enthused as well as challenged about my own devotional life.

Guess where I picked up this gem! At a Christian bookshop? From a church bookstall? At a church jumble sale? Actually, no! I found it on the shelves of a local public library.

What a surprise! You always think that public institutions have to be extra cautious these days about what material they carry. Critics are always on the lookout for bias towards a particular religion. Some will even complain about any religious beliefs being promoted at all. Yet if any institution should be a bastion against creeping censorship of the thought life, it ought to be the public library.

Christians are sometimes encouraged to present books to their local library. The library service is often strapped for cash in these days of economising. Free gifts of good, reasonably sturdily bound new books may well be welcome.

Of course, undesirable cult literature may benefit from the same welcome you hope for. I remember once picking up in a library a cult-inspired work that denied the Trinity. As cults do, it de-throned my Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, from His proper status as fully part of the Godhead.

So what did I do? Of course I was not legally entitled to steal or deface the book. In the end I slipped a tract into the back cover which was a corrective. It stressed Jesus’ place as a full Person of the Trinity, forever one with God the Father and God the Holy Spirit. Then I simply returned the book, with the prayer that the next reader might discover the tract at the back and be led to consider the alternative viewpoint.

Thank God for those who are still producing and selling good Christian tracts, books and other materials. Christian bookshops often have a hard time surviving. They may have to diversify. This can take the form of running a café area or a craft shop or Fair Trade shop within their premises. But they fulfil a hugely valuable function.

Sometimes they are literally a “shop window” on the church. Those who staff them - often volunteers - may have time to spare in sharing the gospel with those who come, spiritually curious, through the doors. Many a person has become a Christian through entering a Christian bookshop. Patrick Johnstone of Operation World is quoted as stating,

“More than half of the born-again Christians in the world testify that literature played a part in their conversion …”

The discovery of a book can sometimes change not just an individual but also a whole people. In the book of Nehemiah we read that God’s people called for the scribe Ezra to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses and read it to them publicly. They listened with riveted attention. They were dumbfounded by the amount of the Law that they had neglected. They almost went into mourning there and then. But their leaders advised that feasting and rejoicing were more appropriate:

“Then Nehemiah the governor … said to them all, ’This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.’” (Nehemiah 8:9 NIV)

And why should they rejoice first? Mainly, because they had heard God’s intentions read - and had understood them.