Making time

I just finished "East of Eden" by John Steinbeck.  It's a wonderfully written novel that takes the reader into the lives of his characters with creative prose that weld you and the character together for eternity.  I was drawn to this book by my wife (Linda). I had preached a sermon from Genesis and took the statement that all of the early Bible characters moved "East" of Eden once they were cast out of the beautiful garden God had created for them.  My wife remembered John Steinbeck's book and checked it out of the library and consumed his writing with the veracity of a race horse.  As you read his book you will probably say to yourself that you'll never write anything other than Email's again in your life.  He is a very penetrating, perceptive writer and story teller.  The book reads itself.

Finding the time to read is a challenge these days with all the demands on us as ordinary people, when finding any time takes  the work of a hired detective.  Why is this so?  Possibly because we are all consumed with trying to live in a consumer society.  I was thinking the other day how the word 'growth' has been so misrepresented as a word in our society.  To most of us it might mean bigger.  Some one asked me the other day if my church was growing?  I said that depends on how I count my Schizophrenics.  Why do we always associate growth with bigger or numbers?  In the world of weight control and diet bigger is not a positive thing.  When was the last time you heard of a house under construction that was under a thousand square feet?  Why we are so mortgage broke, is bigger was better, better for the bankers, not us.  

Just how thick does a steak have to be to be a steak?  Bigger has gotten us into trouble in all areas of our lives.  Small one room schools educated a lot of very intelligent people and a few of them actually became presidents.  The books were smaller but the teachers were great at multitasking.  What was life like when the X-Box was not with us?  Well, believe it or not children actually read for pleasure and adventure, with the by product being a wonderful thing called imagination.  Their was a time when each child had his own imagination and not one borrowed from some other place or thing.

You see, we are smart people when we are allowed to be smart.  Unfortunately what happens is we are restricted or played the fool by the world of advertising and media groups.  They have us all figured out.  What we buy, why we buy it, where we live and what kind of work we do and why.  How much money we make and how much is left over after we pay the bills.  This information then targets us and limits us in our social and economic groups.  The "new" industry vision that build cars, homes and electronics'  are geared to keep us on the edge of our economic scale.  We sit on the peak of our standard of living with no room to move or think.  Everything cost the amount of money we have, goods are targeted at us economically priced.  It is all affordable, at least that is what this new industry would like to have us all believe.  

Affordable. What a word this is.  It actually means to be "reasonably priced".  Reasonable being the optimum word here.  Some things are fine just the way they are, no improvement is necessary.  Make more of what works and make it cheaper and gives us the consumer a break.  One of past myths was bottled water, somehow we all believed it was better.  It was the same old water in a new problematic packaging device.  

Better would be, that it lasts longer, costs less and actually works.  Not to forget the best part that it is needed and intended to make life simpler.  Are we any better as people, I hope so.  I'm not placing any bets on it, but I do think so.  I just hope that we all learn how to out think the people that are our out thinking for us these days.  Wanting less is a good thing.  What it can produce is "more" time.  More time means you can do what you want to do, not what you have to do to keep everything running and updated.  I'm updated to death these days.  I just updated my house insurance, what a trip that was.  Yes, it all goes by square foot, so much per square foot.  Bigger demands bigger money.

All that said to say that we need time to read more.  So shut off the TV put all the furniture that speaks away, find a nice soft chair or couch, find your favorite blanket, turn on the gas fireplace, open the book and start to read.  See how far you get and who knows you might enjoy it, it might improve your life.  Make time for yourself.  You can make time, so stop looking for it and start making some of it.  

Do you know what people group reads the most?  Prisoners in jail. Yes, they have the time to read.  We reward our criminals with the most precious gift life gives - "time".    That's why they call it "doing time".