Nathan Miller

I believe the title says it all. There is a lost art, and it’s called reading. In our ever growing tech savvy society we are growing less and less dependent on reading. Now, as you know, I am a tech nerd myself, and I’m always interested in the newest, coolest gadget. However, in our day of instant communication, where we have at our fingertips more information than generations before could find in a lifetime, we have laid aside the art of reading. I have heard it said that we are a sound bite generation. Watch the evening news and tell me if I’m wrong.

“Wait a minute,” you might say. “I do read!” Really! What? Are you reading magazines, journals, novels, fiction, non-fiction, theology, or a number of other categories? All those genres are good, but are you limiting your reading to just one?

I must confess that the idea for this post came from reading another blog entitled Between the Times. It’s a blog written by several of my former seminary professors at Southeastern. Dr. Bruce Ashford wrote a series of six blogs on Disciplined Reading. If you have the time, I encourage you to read them. I found them extremely helpful. Reading has been a personal struggle for me over the years. In my younger days, reading was not a priority for me. I missed out on so many great opportunities in my middle and high school days. However, in college, when I entered the Word of Bible Institute, I was forced to read, and read I did. At first it was difficult, but then I found that I enjoyed it. As I continued through my under-grad and graduate education that enjoyment turned into a love!

I want to spend the next few posts talking about what I learned from Between the Times, as well as some of personal thoughts or experiences. I will leave you with a quote that has stuck with me for quite some time. I have heard it quoted many times, and I’m not sure who the original author is but here’s the quote:

“It’s been said that five years from now, we will be the same people we are today except for the books we read, the people we meet, the places we go, and the risks we take.”