I need to speak of the tyranny of magazines. We are seduced into purchasing subscriptions because the price is often very cheap, if you catch a special. The magazines promise the firms that purchase advertising that they will have a certain circulation. If they are low on numbers they offer them to us pretty much for the price of the postage so as to boost their numbers. Soon our mailboxes start to fill. Some come once a month but some come weekly. There is Newsweek or Time. There is Popular Mechanics and Popular Science, Readers Digest, National Geographic, The New Yorker, AARP’s Journal, academic journals, church publications and I refuse to even think of the catalogs. Did I mention the daily newspaper? You can forget the Sunday Paper.
You can’t throw them away until you read them and that is always going to be tomorrow. So begins the mountains of magazines stacked around the house. We must be the best read people in the history of the earth; that is if we actually read them. Finally I become overwhelmed and need a fresh start. Trying not to feel guilty I gather up armloads and head for the recycle container. At least I am being a good citizen and recycle. As I dump them I wonder what great article, what great gem of truth I am discarding?
The truth is I need a fresh start. Toss them and begin the mountains anew. I do that with my sins. I have to dump them. If not, I am overwhelmed. Now comes the tricky part. When I dump my sins by claiming God’s promise to forgive me, (See I John 1:9) I have to make sure I don’t put them in the recycle bin. They need never return in any other form.
Written by Roger Bothwell on September 15, 2009
Spring of Life Ministry, PO Box 124, St. Helena, CA 94574
rogerbothwell.org