Truth, Love And Books

I often like to tease my four younger siblings that they exist because of what a wonderful first child I was. In reality, I'm learning, my parents are fairly hearty people. Turns out, their first baby (me) was extremely fussy and pretty prideful and rebellious. Apparently, once as a 9 year old I ran through the neighborhood yellin g: "Call children services, my parents are abusing me!"  (ha not true at all) Now that I'm a mom and some stories of my childhood have been dug up, I'm somewhat mortified over what I put them through. Several times when I would mess up as a kid, I would read the Bible. It made me feel better and if mom would see me she would express pride over my right response to failure. Growing up, I had every reason to believe that the Bible corresponded with reality. My parents lived out their faith, I witnessed God provide for our family financially and answer really detailed prayer requests.  Overall the good book made sense,  and told a story of ...

Recently I have been doing some research for a project. Basically, I have been reading about the benefits of well, reading. I've been particularly interested in my children's generation (dubbed Gen Z) and their inclination to read. And because I'm a Millennial mama, wouldn't you know it, I did a quick google search. The stats are pretty telling. Overall the youngsters are largely tech-savvy, smart phone wizzes but rather book daft.* GenZ kids certainly know how to read but it's the desire to read that is acutely way down. This really should not be too surprising. It's the human default to do what is easy. The modern culture is so filled with quick, painless entertainment that it's no question reading and reading-aloud as a family are increasingly becoming legitimate past times. Reading is hard work. Especially if you've never done it to the point where it becomes enjoyable. But let us not conflate hard and bad. I've found that regularly reading alou...