1 QUOTE

“Every scribe who has been trained is like a master of a house, who brings out treasure old and new.”

- Matthew 13:52

1 NOTE

Last week’s issue of the 1-1-1 considered the value of books and reading. Today we will reflect on how Steven Sample constructed his own personal reading plan. His reading commitment was centered on history and what he called super-texts.

Think of how many articles and posts are read once and immediately discarded. Almost everything that is written today (text messages, social media posts, newspaper stories) will never be read tomorrow. Even the biggest global news story today will be replaced by a new story in 24 hours. We live in a society that hyper-values instant information. Did you know that fewer than one in two hundred (.05%) of all books published in the United States are still in print and purchased after 10 years? The opposite end of that spectrum is what Steven Sample calls super-texts.

He made a list of all the texts in the whole world that are 400 years old and still widely read today. Plato, Aristotle, Shakespeare, Machiavelli (there are more than 50 editions of The Prince currently available today in the US), Shakespeare and my favorite, Chaucer, head the list. This summer Christopher Nolan is re-telling Homer’s Odyssey in film. While the top books are debatable, what is not debatable is the minuscule size of the super-text list. And of course, the greatest supertext of all time, that demands all of our time, is the Word of God.

C.S Lewis said it best, “It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between.” In today’s upside-down world, so many people read the wrong things and spiral deeper into despair, anxiety and the crisis of the day. But those who finish well understand the power of Scripture and supertexts. As we grow a close relationship with Scripture and super-texts, we enjoy a massive competitive advantage by focusing on what brings Kingdom life.

1 QUESTION

Do you have a close relationship with Scripture and supertexts?

Until Next Tuesday,

John