Of the Reading of Books

Of the Reading of books

So here's the question: What is the one book that stands out in your mind when you think back to your childhood? Hmm! Thought about that? What about your children? If you are a parent - what are you encouraging your children to read? Or do they read at all? In these days of Ipods, DVD's, PS3, Xbox 360's, Nintendo DS, broadband and multi-channel TV, reading is becoming an issue - particularly with boys.

Nanny state to the rescue. Alan Johnson, former education secretary for the UK government recently produced a list of more than 160 books, from "Frankenstein" to Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything", to encourage teenage boys to read. The concern is that boys who may have started to read well in primary school stop reading when they hit the teenage years. Money is being invested to puts books like Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island" alongside "The Hitch-hikers Guide to the Galaxy" and fun but factual books like "Why don't Penguins' Feet Freeze?"

It will be interesting to see if the initiative works - but it certainly made me think back to my childhood - and my earliest memories, not of reading, but of being read too. It was a family tradition. Mum always read us children a bedtime story. Mum enjoyed reading, and she enjoyed reading out loud. Her choices of books covered a wide range of subjects within the fairly conservative Christian home that I grew up in. They were treasured moments that developed a love of books in all four of us children.

As we got older we took off reading for ourselves and the world, so to speak, became our oyster. A library ticket and regular visits to the bookshop meant my holiday's were never dull. I enjoyed the outdoor life, spent hours on my bike, joined the families camping holidays - but liked nothing better than curling up with a good book. The same is still true today. Feeling a bit tired? An early night with a good book can be very therapeutic.

We tried the same with our children. I read them the Mr Men books, Enid Blyton, and then gradually moved them on to find them curled up with "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" or some other adventure, fact or fiction that gave them a love for literature. They also got enchanted with the Adventist "Shadow Creek Ranch" series and with Charles Mills "Voyager" series, travelling back in time to the treasured Bible stories - but linking them to modern issues of bullying, integration, family life and so on. They still don't read as much as I do, but then, books today are competing with all the other technologies. My daughter is in the middle of exams at school and would gladly quote the words of Solomon, "Of making many books there is no end, and much study wearies the body." [Eccles. 12:12 NIV]

I've had a couple of interesting conversations in the last few weeks. In fact, both of them have been on "In Conversation", the weekly programme I host for the Hope Channel. In one of them I was talking with scientist, Peter Walton. He is actually not a great reader - but he does remember being read to by his mother as a child. And one of the things she read to him was the Bible. He has been amazed that as he has gone through life, those Bible stories stayed in his mind - not only that, they've been a real help to him.

Peter's mother did exactly what Moses recommended in Deut. 6:4-7 (NIV) -- in a sermon he gave immediately after the delivery of the 10 commandments Moses said:

Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. 5Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. 7Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up.

I identify with that. Family worship, mum reading the Bible stories. It was all an important part of my upbringing. I cry for the many children not given that opportunity. Who are not challenged with the spoilt brat, Joseph, being sold into Egyptian slavery but determining to stay faithful to God, or Daniel and his three friends making hard choices in Babylon, and of course, the stories of Jesus - not just his life - but also the stories he told, the parables, all that wise teaching, so profound and yet so simple.

The challenge, I suppose, is how we turn these ideas into a reality in the 21st century. How we make the Bible practical - alive - relevant. Yet that is equally something they had to tackle in Old Testament times.

For Moses, a relationship with God was a continual, living, vibrant experience. He did not separate the religious and the secular. "Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

Moses successor, Joshua, found a practical way to put this into practice.

Joshua 4:2-7 (ANIV)
"Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, 3and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan from right where the priests stood and to carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight."
4So Joshua called together the twelve men he had appointed from the Israelites, one from each tribe, 5and said to them, "Go over before the ark of the LORD your God into the middle of the Jordan. Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, 6to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, 'What do these stones mean?' 7tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD. When it crossed the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel for ever."

We need memorials like that in our lives. An opportunity to tell others what God has done and is doing for us.

That's one of the privileges of my job! It was true in AWR and it is true now as communication director. I get the privilege of people telling me their stories. Principally this is for the programme, "In Conversation" on the Hope Channel - and if you don't have the Hope Channel you can view it on the internet - but I had an email from Australia this week following the story we shared a week or so back with Pastor Mike Logan - a minister up in Wales.

His story was one of life in Republican Ireland, with his dad active in the IRA, yet how God came into his life and changed him from a heavily drinking man whose marriage and life was falling apart into someone whom his work colleagues came to deeply respect and admire.

It caused the viewer to write, "I have just finished watching this week's program. You have really left us hanging!!! How did the gentleman from Ireland get to becoming a Adventist minister????

He went on say that he would love to use the programme in his class at Brisbane Adventist College. Stories like these change lives - and that is what I try and do with "In Conversation". Get under peoples skin a little bit, see what makes them tick. And while the Hope Channel audience is, I suspect, predominantly Adventist at the moment, the aim of the programmes we make here in the British Union is to try and attract people who to have an "ah ha" experience. To come to the end of the programme and say - if God can do it for Mike Logan - maybe there is something there for me.

Our sound engineer, Chis, is not an Adventist. He comes in on contract on the days we are filming. I've got to know him quite well over the last few months. This last Wednesday we recorded three editions of "In Conversation". One with a lady who works in HR - and is heavily involved in a church plant in Dunstable, one with an Adventist who is a police officer in the Nottinghamshire Constabulary and who rose to the challenge of how you bring God into the workplace - and one with a Christian activist from Crieff church in Scotland - someone who was convinced to make his Christianity practical and real - and where that church of some 60 members has donated £22,000 to two selected projects: an old folks home in Romania and an Aids orphan project in Lesotho. The largest line item in their church budget is the "make poverty history" budget. He told me that a girl in her early 20's came to him last Sabbath and gave him an envelope for the project. He got home and found it contained £500 in £20 notes. That kind of commitment changes a church and changes people.

I had a long conversation with Chris after the days filming. "You Adventists are such fascinating people", he told me. "Very often I go home and share the stories with my wife." I keep finding that these stories come up in my conversation."

Stories like this give handles to the council of Moses, "Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up."

You can tell I enjoy my job, can't you. What better than hearing how God makes a difference in peoples lives? But how does that story telling - that sharing the Good News, become a reality for us here in church this morning? How does my story impact the lives of others?

I was sitting in the St Andrews Street Baptist Church in Cambridge back in March. It was the "5th quinquneial congress on preaching" and one of the presentations that day came from a Southern Baptist preacher who referred to the parable that all Adventists wish Jesus hadn't given -- Luke 16:19-31. You know the story don't you? The rich man and Lazarus.

Why did Jesus tell that story? It's made it so difficult for us Adventists. And my Baptist friend went against everything I believe as an Adventist. He spoke about how the reality of hell gave an imperative to preaching whereas I believe the idea of eternally burning torment for the sins of 70 years, is one of the things that has really put people off Christianity.

But look at the story. For those who don't believe in reading fiction - you have a problem here - 'cause here is Jesus telling a piece of fiction - something my Baptist friend also recognised - and he also recognised that the story here has nothing to do with hell - but everything to do with opportunities for salvation.

Luke 16:19-31 (NIV)
"There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. 20At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 21and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.
22"The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side. The rich man also died and was buried. 23In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 24So he called to him, 'Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.'
25"But Abraham replied, 'Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. 26And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.'
27"He answered, 'Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, 28for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.' 29"Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.' 30" 'No, father Abraham,' he said, 'but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.'
31"He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.' "

Note that last verse: 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'

Listening. Communication. Sharing the story. It is so important. The rich man, some people call him "Dives" - which is really just from the Latin for "rich man" -- The rich man is so involved in his own life and happiness that he has ignored not just salvation - but also the social gospel, the needs of others.

Jesus told this parable on the Sabbath day - one of a series of parables given after he does some straight talking in a Pharisees house, heals on the Sabbath and then is surrounded by crowds of tax collectors and sinners. It is part of a series of parables on seeking and finding the lost - whether the lost sheep, coin or son in chapter 15, or the lost manager in the beginning of chapter 16 or, in this case, the lost rich man. It was some straight talking to those of the first century health and wealth movement who believed that if you were righteous God made you wealthy and if you were poor or ill you must be a sinner.

The story would have hit home to his listeners - and it hits home to me. 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'

Am I any better than the rich man - brought up Adventist. Knowing the doctrines, the 28 fundamentals - never having seriously strayed off into the world - spiritually rich - but do I notice the poor man by my gate. Do I get so comfortable in my pew, surrounded by my Advenitst friends, that I'm not even aware the poor man exists! That is why Ron Lawrence joined the Nottinghamshire police - he felt trapped in the bubble of Adventism - -a very comfortable bubble - but in joining the police his life, his witness, his world view have expanded expontentially.

That is why I admire things like the Teen Focus Church here at Newbold - reaching outside their comfort zone - and sometimes our comfort zone - to touch their school friends.

That's why I love communication - it is getting the message I love - -the message of Jesus - outside of my comfort zone to those who don't know Jesus.

I'm impressed that among the 90,000 visitors to adventist.org.uk each month are a significant number who are not Adventist. I'm challenged when I discover that a significant number of people who subscribe to BUC News are folk who no longer go to church, but who want keep some link with the church via the internet. I have to be conscious of that as I write the news!

That is why, in the last few months, I've tried to make the website more assessable to non-Adventists. But I would extend the invitation beyond my role - to your role as a church member here at Newbold. Have you noticed the poor man at your gate - your neighbour, your work colleague, your friends at school or college - are your challenged by their need of Christ? Are you ready to open a window to them - let them share a view with you of the God you love and serve?

I was reading the Gospel of John again recently. Fascinating story. Jesus touching peoples lives. All the way from John's wonder at the beginning, "We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." [John 1:14 NIV] - right to the end where he states that, "Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. [John 20:30-31 NIV]

John wrote a book - told a story - shared the wonder of his Saviour and God. His experience with Jesus just had to be told. And it is a story still worth telling. The same wonder that Moses had -- "These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up"

The same challenge from Joshua -- "These stones are to be a memorial to the people of Israel for ever."

The same challenge to Jesus listeners, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'

Perhaps the message to Education Secretary, Alan Johnson is add one more to the 100 top books recommended for boys to read. Make the Bible #1. It's such a fascinating read - and at its best is not just bedtime reading - but is life changing - and with the skills of modern communication, or just in common conversation, its values can make a real difference for now and for eternity.

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