Taking It Seriously

One of the challenges of being a Christian is trying to take it seriously without becoming grim. There is a fine balance there. At our Men's Huddle (Men's group), the guys asked about my library. They wanted to know what tools I used in preparing sermons, teaching, etc. As I was explaining, one of the younger guys asked, "How did these authors find time to do all this?"

I immediately blew his mind by noting that works like Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, Hodge's Systematic Theology, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, and others like these were done without the aid of a computer! My young friend was a bit glassy-eyed as he tried to absorb all of this.

It's not that I long for these days gone by. Believe me, I love my computer, cell phone and all the other modern gadgets (try writing a paper in seminary on a typewriter and having to include Greek or Hebrew characters ... it was a nightmare!). I just wonder what got into these men and women to produce these types of works. In contrast, we appear to have very "thin soup" when it comes to what is being sold in Christian book stores today.

Could it be that in days gone by that these saints just toughed it out and dug into God's Word when things were going bad? Today, we have all sorts of volumes for all sorts of ailments that face in our lives. People have done the research for us. I wonder if there is something more when you dig it out for yourself.

1 Kings 1-2