“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
So wrote author Annie Dillard of her character Vinnie Fishburn in The Living. For Fishburn, books were not simply a vacation companion or occasional accessory. They were integral to life.
While not everyone has such a profound, ongoing relationship with books, it is one of the great human experiences to know such a feeling—whether once or over and over again. The moment when the words on a page connect with the thoughts in our minds, emotions in our hearts, and stirrings in our souls is a precious one.
Whether novels or nonfiction, theory or theology, books invite us to inhale. In a world of exertion, pace, and frenzy, books remind us to tend to ourselves. And as we breathe in beautiful words, we become better equipped to speak of good things.
May we invite ourselves and those we love to read as an act of restoration, trusting God to work in our ideas, imaginations, and innermost parts.