The other day I was in a hospital cafeteria reading to pass the time. My husband was in surgery. He was supposed to be out in half an hour, and an hour had already gone by.
Time flew by when I had my nose in a book. When I stopped reading and took to pacing, time dragged like an unpopular bill waiting to pass through parliament.
Reading must have been a great help to Rita Chretien, the woman stranded alone in the Nevada backroads, her van stuck in the mud, out of gas and the battery dead. She survived 49 days on prayer, a little trail mix, water and by reading books.
Reading probably helped her break those maddening cycles of futile thought we all go through in desperate situations.
It must have taken her mind off the horror of it all; a woman stranded, with only God and a minivan as her refuge.
I know one thing for sure--from now on, I'm keeping a few good books in my car. Ones I like a lot, or ones I've never read but always wanted to. Ones I'm curious about, and ones that have been recommended to me by friends.
Mrs. Chretien had a Bible along, too. That makes for a lot of hours of reading. Especially when you get in the beget section. They tend to be pretty long and tedious.
But D.H. Lawrence once said he loved the Bible; it was like a long series of stories, all passionate and powerful, full of sex, violence, intrigue and adventure.
That's the human side of it. But there's something else there, too. God's eternal love and infinite patience with the human condition. I'm sure that most of all, that one book helped Mrs. Chretien survive.
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