What’s the longest book you’ve ever read?
The longest by time? By page? Or by influence?
For Christians, the answer comes swiftly: the Bible—sixty-six books, penned across fifteen centuries by dozens of writers, all carried by the Spirit’s breath.
By time, it has walked with me since childhood. By page, I have turned every leaf, yet still I read, page by page, discerning deeper. By influence, His word is a lamp to my feet, a light to my path—the Bible speaks loud and clear to my heart. I choose what I read; I finish what is worth finishing. But the Bible, spanning Old and New Testaments—no one ever finishes reading it.
Yet the truly longest book, I see, is the book of the world—its script unfolding from creation to the end of days, where everyone has a page or two to play, to rewrite, or to rebuke. Many play double roles—rewriting themselves and rewriting others, or playing lines that never belonged to them.
God is both Reader and Scriptwriter. Yet He mostly reads the world’s drama; only now and then does He alter the script according to His purpose (Jeremiah 29:11). Scripture declares: “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:9). But the spiritual man judges all things (1 Corinthians 2:15).
Reading His words by heart, I know more of His ways and thoughts towards me—I follow my foreordained script and discern what comes at the end of days. I hold fast to God’s promise:
“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love Him.”
—1 Corinthians 2:9
May you find your own book that lights your path. And may the poem below stir your heart to open the Book that blesses a lifetime.
—
“Alpha and Omega”
Wind and clouds foretold—yet none can stay their power.
Fortune, calamity guessed—yet who commands the whole?
Nature’s might: how wondrous, how terrible, how dear.
Six days of making—sun and moon like shuttles fly.
A lifetime’s chase—gone in a single eve.
Man in the cosmos—no more than sand in the sea.
Wind and clouds, fortune and calamity—who sees through them all?
O great and awesome One—
Your commandments abide in my heart;
Your statutes I ponder always.
The body ages, but the heart does not—
fed by Your words.
Honey on my tongue, sweetness in my heart—
for I am Yours.
All things end; Your steadfast love endures forever.
—
en yan hua fang 