“Get lost in these BOOKS,” I am reading on the cover in big letters of the 2013 Kiwi Kids’ Good Book Guide, (New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards) I picked up today at our local library here in Kaitaia.
“GET LOST IN THESE BOOKS”
“Books play a key role in the development of young minds – opening up new horizons and new worlds of possibility,” says the sponser at the beginning of his note.
Do I ever know that from my own experience. I surely got lost in the books of the little school library in the north of Germany. I went to school in a little village called Faulueck near the border of Denmark. The school does not exist any more. I liked especially the books about foreign countries like Australia and other far away places. My desire was to go to the countries I read about. And I did! I used to live in Thailand for quite some time and now I am residing here in New Zealand.
In the 2013 Kiwi Kids’ Good Book Guide is also a note from the three judges.
“This sheer variety makes judging especially hard, and so we have tried to read with an eye for those special books whose qualities will outlast the current fads and fashions,” the three judges are writing.
I mentioned already that I got lost in the books of the little school library in Faulueck in the north of Germany, but now I am getting lost in the BIBLE, “The Book of Books.”
Why do I get lost in the Bible like so many other people worldwide? My answer is that the Bible will not only outlast the current fads and fashions, the BIBLE will outlast everything.
Once upon a time the Bible was for me like any other book on the book shelf. But a day came when I got to know the author of the BIBLE, the Holy Spirit, and from that day on the Bible became alive for me.
I don’t know how many times I have read the Bible from cover to cover, every word. That I don’t know is rather unfortunate.
In Matthew 24:35 it says,
“HEAVEN AND EARTH WILL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS WILL NEVER PASS AWAY.”
And this is what Martin Luther said and please excuse my poor translation from German into English: “The BIBLE is not antique, the BIBLE is not modern, the BIBLE is eternal.”
