The Waters

I've purposely changed the name of the book that I am reading because the author it not finished with it and I don't want to divulge anything without his expressed desire.

I'm reading a book that I have increasingly very grateful for. I keep going back and forth questioning myself whether or not I am grateful for the book because it is being written by a friend of mine, or whether I am grateful for that book simply on the merit of it's content. I really think to lean towards the latter. I looked at the first three or four chapters a few years ago and tried to push my way through it in a somewhat obligatory sense. It was slow going and I think I managed to skate based the obligatory inclination I had but I didn't have a lot of 'my' time then and therefore little to no flexibility to read. For many reasons I think it didn't really affect me then though I thought of it as "ok" and something that I did want to finish reading.

However now, I am reading it because I have been drawn to it. An electronic copy of it has been sitting for about three years on an mp3 player that has a text reader within it's functions.

I can't fully explain this draw. I don't know if it's just something that I'm reading because I haven't heard from my friend in a few months, or whether it's God's Spirit leading me to read it. Should I attribute something so searious as God's Spirit to a desire to read a book like this? I don't know, but I do know there are a hundred good reasons to do so. Namely that my friend has believed it was certainly God's Spirit that has been leading him to work on the book (which I certainly believe). And another is that is God's intention through the book that he is leading my friend to write, that all men that seek God would be encouraged and enriched through the Messiah more and more, and it's it's God's will that the spiritually blind would see and the lame should walk.

The way I am being 'transported' into that world that I am reading about reminds me of the way that I was 'transported' into the world of a few other books I read over the years; namely William Arden's "The Headless Horse" which is a mystery book written for children. I read that when I was about seven or eight years old (I think); and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,  The Silver Chair, and the other books in tne Narnia series which I read between the sixth and the seventh grades.

There is a difference however. This time I am being transported into a world that matters, a world that means something to me. God gave me faith about eight years ago and this book is hitting parts of me that are feeling a nourishment from it that I didn't know even needed nourishment. In some ways I want to resist this but in other ways I want to look at it and just enjoy what I'm finding there.