I read Elisabeth Elliot’s devotional today, “Some of My Best Friends are Books.” It is so wonderful — she stirs my soul! I don’t want to cut and paste the whole devotional since it’s under her copyright, but I’ll link to it and hope you can visit.

Here a few wonderful excerpts:

I have almost always been surrounded by books. I wouldn’t be surprised if my mother put some in the crib along with my toys, just to get me used to them early. The first house I remember living in was one of those double ones of which there are hundreds in the suburbs of Philadelphia. We lived in Germantown, in what was probably a cramped house (although to me as a child it seemed large) and there were books in the living room, books in the dining room, books in all of the bedrooms and tall bookcases lining the halls. My father came home at night with a briefcase full of papers and books.

No wonder she grew up to be a writer who changed the hearts of thousands of people with her words!

Evenings at home were often spent with the whole family sitting together, each with his head in a book. Or at times my father would read aloud…A big dictionary was always within reach of the dining room table because it was there that arguments most frequently arose over words. He wanted them quickly settled, and made us look up the words in question…

But of course there was the Bible, in a class all by itself. This was The Book in our home, and we heard it read every day, usually twice a day. The King James English was as simple and familiar to me, with all its “beholds” and “it came to passes,” as Philadelphia talk (pronounced twawk). The resonance of the Books of Moses, the cadences of the Psalms, the lucidity of the Gospel of John, the soaring rhapsodies of Paul on the love of God, the strange figures of the Book of the Revelation, all sank deeply into my heart and mind. Everything in life, I believed, had meaning as it related to what I knew of The Book.

She ends her essay by writing, “Kafka said that books should serve as ‘the axe for the frozen sea within us.’ As a Christian reader I bring to bear on the book I am reading the light of my faith.”

P.S. You’ll notice I’ve added Elisabeth Elliot to my Blogroll of Favorites — so I can remember to read her every day.