READ
John Butch Preston
johnhprestonauthor.com
The best thing you can do with your leisure time during this awful period is to read some good books. Unlike other aspects of life, reading a book is something you’ll never regret doing. Getting absorbed in a good novel will take your mind away from the awful news we are hearing everyday. It will also reward you intellectually and spiritually, and may even help alleviate feelings of loneliness. How can you read Carson McCullers’ To Kill a Mockingbird and not come away emotionally changed in some way?
If you don’t know what to read, then go to a website that lists the hundred greatest books ever written and choose one or two that seem interesting to you. Or you may want to go back and read Hawthorn’s The Scarlet Letter—which you were assigned to read in high school or college and never did, and finally relieve yourself of that guilt. But if you already have books in your household then consider rereading them. The test of a really good book is if you can reread it and find enjoyment in it again, and perhaps a new meaning that you missed the first time.
I often reread books. Currently I am rereading Horseman on the Roof by the great Italian writer Jean Giono, a novel about a horseman involved in a cholera epidemic in France during the 1830s, and how stupidly and crudely it was dealt with, because of their ignorance of what caused it. I’m also rereading Mexican neuroscientist Roger Bartra’s Anthropology of the Brain. So far, they haven’t discovered how the human brain produces consciousness, but they have determined that the mind does allow for a modest amount of freewill, which tells us that not everything is fated to be, as most of us think it is.
So pick up a good book now. Great Minds are the true treasures of the world, and you can only find them by reading.
I believe Harper Lee wrote “To Kill a Mockingbird.” Carson McCullers wrote other books.
The best book of all time is the authorized Holy Bible, commonly referred to as the “1611 King James.”
If you are seeking redemption, you can find it in Romans 10:9-10 “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thy heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be save.
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession in made unto salvation.”
Man’s wisdom has never trumped God’s and never will.
Praying for you, neighbor.
Good comment Diane.
Don’t forget though, that believing is only part of God’s instructions on being saved. Mark 16:16 (KJV) “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” We must follow all scriptures, not just one or two. We’ve been instructed to be baptised as well before we are saved. Then we must live faithfully.
OOPS! That last word of Romans 10:9 should be “saved.” It is too easy to be typing and see what you expect to see.
A human failing that occurs when one doesn’t review the writings closely enough.
Now if that was my only human failing. Sigh:)
I agree with my friend, John “Butch” Preston and I have a suggestion: you might want to read a couple of Butch’s books, EVERYTHING IMPORTANT HAPPENS ON A HILLSIDE and TEN MILES FROM CLAY CITY AND OTHER STORIES. These books are about people in our native Kentucky.