Thankful Thursday

By Belinda

Reading is a capacity that I am endlessly grateful for. Today we begin to celebrate the birth of the one identified as The Word. How fitting to celebrate reading.

It still is amazing to me that lines, dots and squiggles on a page, can be turned by our brains into representations of thoughts.

I remember when the miracle unfolded for me when as a child I was riding on the upper level of a Midland Red, double decker bus. As we lurched along, I stared through the window at the panorama of shops and advertising billboards and began, as we passed them, to stitch the letters together into words! I had already been reading simple books at school about seeing Jack run; and Dick and Dora and their dog; but this was different. It was the first time that a fluid stream of letters came alive before my eyes quite effortlessly--and I realized that the door to a magical world had just opened.

I devoured books insatiably after that. I was as thirsty for books as a sponge is for water. I had been given a precious gift that I would unwrap every time I opened a new book. I lost myself in fairy tales and Greek mythology, poetry and the classics, escaping into my fantasies and probably ruining my eyesight with long nights under the covers with a flashlight.

I love exploring new ideas, learning to better understand others and their points of view. I am enriched and changed by what I read.

Through reading God's book, I know him.

John 1:14 (Contemporary English Version)

The Word became

a human being

and lived here with us.

We saw his true glory,

the glory of the only Son

of the Father.

From him all the kindness

and all the truth of God

have come down to us.