A Year Long Quest to Read: Book 1

Somewhere around January 1 I was on Facebook and came across a picture that a friend had shared. The picture was a list of books to be read this year. It wasn't specific titles, but instead included descriptions of books like one with a blue cover or one that takes place in summer or one that you choose only because of the cover. I was drawn to this picture again and again over the next few days, going back to my friend's page just to look at it again. Finally I decided to just print the picture so I didn't have to keep going online. I then took the step of typing out the list for myself and placing it on one of the two whiteboards that exist in my office. There it stuck for several more days until I finally decided to take the plunge and begin a new journey.

I should probably say that I used to be a voracious reader, for years you would find me with my nose stuck in a book, an adventure, a mystery, a book on faith and religion and Jesus, a random book that someone suggested, or a Harry Potter novel. For a multitude of reasons I have gotten away from that guy, partly because I engaged in TV and movies more, partly because my relationships changed, partly because my jobs changed, but mostly because I changed. If we are honest, change is usually a mixture of good and bad and one of the things I have begun to realize is that I missed the books, missed the education, and missed the journeys. So I finally decided to take the plunge and begin a new journey.

If you do the math to read 26 books over the course of a year you must read one book every 2 weeks and if you understand the calendar you will notice that I am writing this on February 2nd/3rd, so I am a bit behind already. I have finished book 1 though, which is why I am writing this in the first place I think it might be fun to share with you all the books I read, why I chose them and what, if anything, I get out of them.

As I said it was a list of 26 book suggestions and me being me I decided to start with #11 A book you started but never finished.

I originally came across Selling Water by the River by Shane Hipps several years ago while browsing the new books at the Anderson Public Library. Every so often I will peruse the new religious books to see if anything gets my attention, and on that day I saw the title, which was interesting, and saw the author. Shane Hipps has written other books that I have not read, but I know others who have read them and recommended them. The final grabbing point was the subtitle ‘a book about the life Jesus promised and the religion that gets in the way’ and I was hooked. If you know me, and if you are reading this blog you most likely do, you know that I have a love/hate relationship with Christianity as a whole. I love Jesus, I am a pastor, but there is a multitude of things that the large C Church does that makes me want to go live in a cave.

I proceeded to pick up the book and brought it home to read. I got through the first 6 chapters of a 14 chapter book before it was due back at the library. I loved those chapters and the instant I brought the book back is the instant that it showed up on my Amazon wish-list. Several months later it showed up on a Christmas list, and because I am loved by my in-laws I received it just over a year ago, and from that point it lived on my bookshelf waiting to be picked up and read.

Fast Forward one year and I did exactly that, rereading the first 6 chapters and finishing the final 8. As the subtitle suggest Shane’s main goal is to make us all realize that Jesus is offering us the river [of knowledge, heaven, eternal life, true life now, etc.] and sometimes Christianity gets in the way. Shane begins with the title of the book saying that the church is selling by the river, but that it is not the river never has been and never will be. He uses various teachings of Jesus to get his points across, mixing them with modern day illustrations/parables.

Now, I am a member of the choir that Shane is proverbially preaching to, so I obviously feel that he did a good job at accomplishing his set about task. He is an engaging writer, more than adequately combining the Bible and modern life. I particularly appreciated his dealing with Paul’s teaching in Acts 17. In the passage Paul sees a statue that the Romans have erected to an ‘Unknown god’ and proceeds to tell the people gathered about God and Jesus, explaining this God. Shane equated it to anonymous donors for a botanical garden, explaining that Jesus doesn’t have to interact with the world only in terms of people who know him and preach his name, but that Jesus moves and touches and changes people independent of our knowledge of him.

I have 25 more books to read, some novels, some poetry, some biographies, some non-fiction and I feel that this was a good place to start. I hope that it will continually remind me that the books in and of themselves are not really the point of this exercise, the point is to reconnect with a part of me that I have let go of, much like the point of Jesus’s teaching is not to get me to some faraway place after I stop breathing but rather to change the life that I am currently living, giving us all access to the river here and now.

Peace and Love,

Pastor K