Learning from the books we read:

I love to read! I enjoy holding a book and enjoying the story that envelopes from the pages.  One of the many reasons I love to write is because I want others to be as inspired by the words I put on a page as I have been with countless other authors and writers.  I have grown in my love of reading over the last few years, and I am incredibly grateful for it.  While I used to only see myself reading books of fiction and make-believe, I have grown to love and adore works of nonfiction.  My favorite being memoirs.  These are not fake stories, but rather these are true stories of what has happened in a person’s life and what life lessons they have learned from them.  I would love to give you a little glimpse of just what I have learned about the world through my last few books I have completed.  I know that not every single person who reads my blogs is a book reader, but I hope through this blog post, you too can see a bit of a glimpse of what is happening in the world around us.  

One of my favorite books I have read recently is called, “The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree.” This is about a young woman named Nice Leng’ete.  She was from a community in Kenya. While she loves her people, she does not agree with some of the customs and traditions of her culture.  One of these is genital mutilation done to young girls.  She also fights and speaks against marrying young girls off, accepting abuse towards wives, and limited availability for future education for those young girls.  She has created “A Nice Place Foundation” which saves many girls from genital mutilation and has increased many young girls odds to getting future education and living independent lives.  

This book opened my eyes to a different culture.  Her book highlights the intelligent and wonderful items of her culture, but she also creates awareness to some traditions that are very present in many different places that are hard on young girls.  As a woman, myself, and as a teacher to many young girls, I could not imagine that happening to any of the young girls I interact with.  The world can be hard enough without the acceptance of abuse and no hope of furthering education. I want my students, all of them to succeed.  I never want them to feel they can’t achieve anything.  I do especially want my female students to feel they can continue in their education and have smart contributions to bring to the table. 

This last book, “The Girls in the Wild Fig Tree” was a good reminder that we can love a culture, a country, a group of people, yet disagree with certain ways some items are handled.  A book that is a good reminder of the problems in the United States is the “Invisible Child, ” by Andrea Elliott.  This book was following one particular family fighting through poverty in New York City.  This originally started as a newspaper article that would gain a lot of attention, and then would be extended to this book.  This book follows a young girl named Dasani Coates and her family.  She is smart, strong, and independent, but she and her family hit many struggles with poverty and addiction.  

Often we can judge those who are stuck in poverty.  We can believe they are the ones who have gotten themselves in this position.  They choose the place they are currently in life.  I will not deny that I believe Dasani’s parents did not necessarily make the best choices, but there were many times they were given the worst chances and received very little assistance.  This is also a good reminder that the parent’s mistakes should not go to the child.  The children are not in poverty for any choices of their own making. 

The last book I want to highlight is by pastor, David Platt. The book is titled, “Something Needs to Change.” David Platt cares a lot about fighting for the poor.  However, he is very honest about his challenging trip to the Himalayas.  He saw so much hurt, both physical and spiritual.  He heard about a village that has no young girls because they have been taken into sex trafficking, young boys chained up in the barn of their parent’s household, and villages almost being wiped out by diseases like chlorea-a totally preventable disease with good running water.  The story I am hearing from David was heartbreaking to read, and I could not imagine experiencing or hearing these stories that he did in person, myself.  

This book is a good reminder that God has called all of us to help the poor and the powerless.  There are struggles and there are many hurting in the world.  There are many who are away from God, who are sick, who are being enslaved or someone held against their will.  David highlights a Christian’s call to love and care for those around the world.  We are called to care for their physical needs, but more importantly we should be incredibly concerned about helping them with their spiritual needs.  We need to be more determined with bringing them to God and teaching them that Jesus is the way to ultimate salvation.  

In conclusion, it does not have to be reading, but I believe it is very important for us as God’s followers to be aware of what is going on in the world.  This is even mentioned in the Bible, in Proverbs 1:5, “Let the wise hear and increase in learning, and the one who understands obtain guidance.”  This verse is a reminder that God loves when we take time to grow in wisdom.  With that wisdom we seek to gain, we can receive more guidance from Him for our next steps.  I know, not everyone reading this likes to read.  However, I do want to challenge all of you this week of finding something new about the world around you.  This could be a social justice issue, a mission group in a certain country and who they are seeking to help, or learning about a completely new and different group of people that share the world with you.