Jerold Jenkins, president of Jenkins Group Inc, a publishing
house, posted these shocking statistics:
33 % of high school graduates never read another book
for the rest of their lives.
42 % of college graduates never read a book after
college.
80 % of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last
year.
70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the
last five years.
It seems to me that those who don’t read choose to be
ignorant. Sounds harsh, but you can only learn so much from your
backyard. I like what Barbara Tuchman, the respected Jewish historian
wrote back in 1979: Books are the carriers of
civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science
crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill. Books are humanity in
print.
Someone’s going to throw Ecclesiastes 12:12 at me: “Of making
many books there is no end.” Solomon said that, but how do you suppose it
happened that “his wisdom surpassed the wisdom of all the people…for he was
wiser than all other men…and people from all nations came to hear the wisdom of
Solomon” (1 Kings 4:30-34). Do you think he might have read a book
or two?
I have long encouraged parents to foster a love of reading in
their children. A child who reads will be educated. And the
best way to instill that love is by setting an example. Share with them
what you’re learning from your reading. Read to them and with them.
My parents never had a lot of money, but they never scrimped on books. We
bought them and we borrowed them, but the policy was- every other book I
read had to be a book of the Bible. Read “Call of the Wild” by Jack
London, then read “The Gospel by John Mark.” Thus both mind and soul
were stretched.
From the pastor’s pen
Pastor Wayne
