My Bookcase

My bookcase is a pretty good summation of me. Most of my shelves have been ordered with books divided into sections. There's the Shakespeare section from high school and early college, the G.A. Henty books from my younger teens, the Math and Science books from school, and of course the Star Wars books that permeated the entirety of my childhood since I could read. These sections are all pretty much static. I've read the books, and maybe if I had time I'd read them again for nostalgia, but they're more memories than current influences, more of a fling than a lasting relationship.

Then there's the one section that has kept expanding, forcing me to re-arrange my shelves, find more space, and ultimately get rid of some of my childhood books. The doctrine books. The one section that started when I learned to read, and has continued to grow throughout my life. Now don't get me wrong, it's been a slow growth, but no other section of my bookcase can I look at and trace my entire reading life through. There's books on there about character from back when I thought Christianity was about actions, books about Godly relationships from when I decided girls weren't that bad, and books about worldly amusements and conviction from when I was confronted with a need to develop beliefs on topics I hadn't faced before. These are the books God used in my life to draw me closer to Him.

There are always a few books missing from my bookcase though. The books I'm learning from now. These books are scattered around the room. Two are on my desk, one is on my chair, another is across the room on top of my storage bins. They're not lost, they're not gathering dust, they're being read, and thus they've been placed in convenient locations for me to pick up. 

These are the books that will one day sit on my bookcase and be picked up every so often for me to thumb through, remembering what they taught me and serving as a testament to God's work in my life. I can already see their effect on one level, and I look forward to being able to look back and see it even more clearly. I like to think of myself as a child growing ever so slowly, finally being able to reach a new shelf where God has placed resources to guide me. One day I hope to pull a book from my proverbial "top shelf" and be able to fully appreciate the journey God has led me through.

My hope is that in the coming weeks, months, years, who knows, I'll be able to look back at this blog and see something similar. I want to see these thoughts move from the store, to the coffee table, to the bookcase, ready to be grabbed at a moment's notice and applied to my life. 

- Jeremy Peggins, Building Bookcases writer