Pat retired from teaching math last year and took a job at the library three days a week.  For something to do. "I don't have to make any student do anything that they don't want to do anymore," she said.  "I can read, and check out books for others to read."

Last week, she took me to lunch and I could tell something was wrong.  "What's bothering you?" I asked her.  "It's the library," she answered.  "You love the library," I said.  "Yes, I do, but it is so depressing."

"I can't think of any reason why a library would be depressing," I told her.

"Well, I just realized today that there are hundreds and hundreds of books that I want to read, and I don't have enough years left to do it."  She reads three or four books a week, so I figure that she will make a dent in it.

"Maybe there will be a library in heaven," I said.

Yesterday, I opened a box of books.  Religious books.  Dozens and dozens of them.  Even though I have read them all, I can't remember what half of them had to say.  One by one I put them into some sort of order on a bookshelf and set aside a few that I want to reexamine.  I love to read, too.

Media has almost put reading as I once knew it out of business, but holding a book in your hands has a kind of magic.  I just don't get the same kind of a buzz with a Kindle or my Ipad.  I like to turn the pages.  I like the feel of the paper.  I like to write in the margins.

Psalms 40:7 "Then said I, Lo, I come: in the volume of the book--it is written of me,"
Hebrews 10:7 "Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book--it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God."  The writer of the book of Hebrews was quoting the Psalms.  He added that he wanted to do God's will.  That is the secret of peace.

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