How many of you would like to take the day and spend it doing nothing else but reading? For some of you, that is a horrific thought. You take time to read this devotional and your Bible but even that is a bit of a struggle because you just don’t enjoy reading. Others of you seem to always have something in your hand to read. A day to do nothing but read? Just the thought of it is enough to excite you into delirium!
Today has been designated as National Read a Book Day. If you celebrated it, you could read about how on this same day in 1892, Iowa farmer John Froelich sold his first gasoline powered tractor. This was quite a step up from the steam powered tractors that had been around for a while.
You could also read about the ground broken by Dr. Henry Dalton, professor of surgery at Marion Sims College of Medicine. A patient presented with a stab wound. Dr. Dalton stitched up the wound which had punctured the pericardium around the heart. This was considered to be one of the first open heart surgeries.
If you were so inclined, you could read how Clarence Saunders opened his first Piggly Wiggly grocery store on this day in 1916, revolutionizing the typical grocery shopping experience. Up until this day, patrons would take their list to the store which would be filled by a clerk. The Piggly Wiggly introduced the grocery shopper to shopping for their own food items. Here we are in 2024 reverting back to the pre-Piggly Wiggly days by ordering online and picking up our grocery order already filled. Progress has gone full circle!
Years ago, there was a campaign called Reading Is Fundamental. While it was only applied to secular books, the true application applies to reading the Scriptures. Reading is fundamental to gaining the knowledge we need that can make us “wise unto salvation” and supply our hearts and minds with the fuel that will turn into wisdom once we are saved.
God intended this to begin at an early age. Deuteronomy 6:6-9 says, “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: (7) And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. (8) And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. (9) And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy house, and on thy gates.”
The Jews wear phylacteries on their foreheads or on their wrists. The phylactery is just a small box with a strap containing a piece of parchment with verses from the
Torah written on it. I would assume that this was to make it convenient to carry a portion of Scripture since lugging around a bunch of scrolls would have been impractical. The idea was to READ these Scriptures. Instead, phylacteries just became ways to show self-righteous piety. It would be the equivalent of comparing the size of one’s Bibles. It doesn’t matter how many or how big your Bible is if it isn’t read!
While you may not be able to spend the whole day reading, why not try to carve out some extra time for reading God’s Word. Fix that big mug of coffee or hot chocolate and find a quiet place where you can read without interruption.
Deuteronomy 17:19-20 gave instruction applicable to us today. “And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the LORD his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them: (20) That his heart be not lifted up above his brethren, and that he turn not aside from the commandment, to the right hand, or to the left: to the end that he may prolong his days in his kingdom, he, and his children, in the midst of Israel.”
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