Off The Shelf

After gathering dust on the shelf for over 14 years, I finally selected a book I purchased on Leadership. It professed to help people become servant leaders, a topic I have longed to understand more fully and practice more regularly. After completing it, I couldn’t help but wonder why it took me so long to pull it down off the shelf.

I realized an important truth: If you want a book to teach you something, you need to read it!

The many nutrition and physical fitness books I own can do nothing about my soft belly and high cholesterol if they remain on the shelf. The books on financial management will not help me balance my checkbook if left unread. And the many books on prayer cannot help me create a deep spiritual life if left on the shelf.

Recovery circles remind us that someone needs to become “sick and tired of being sick and tired” before he or she can get sober. They also teach the definition of insanity as doing the same behavior but expecting a different result. I think the wisdom of recovery speaks to all of us who own books we have not read, and long for lives we do not lead. At some point, we need to get sick and tired enough to reach up, select the book, and learn something new.

While shopping the other night, I watched as a number of people selected Bibles for graduation and first communion gifts. I remember when I received such a gift. In fact, I still have the Bible. It’s on my shelf, next to many other Bibles, sitting like a museum piece waiting for me to open it.