Make Time for Spiritual Reading? You Have Got to be Kidding!!!

Time, the precious quantity. When you think about it, most of the ascetic practices encouraged by our Orthodox faith require time: prayer, attendance at Divine Liturgy, partaking of the sacraments, works of mercy, daily scripture reading, fasting, etc. These practices help us know God’s love. While knowing God’s love is the ultimate experience of heaven on earth, our busy lives pose a challenge to tapping into to the treasures Orthodoxy holds.
Spiritual reading is one of the ascetic practices that helps us know God’s love. It also requires time. How is it possible to make time? Some think that in order to read a spiritual book, hours of time must be carved out on a regular basis, to ever have the hope of finishing a book. For many, carving out hours of time simply will not work due to time demands of current obligations.
An alternative is the busy mom, busy senior, busy executive, or busy laborer strategy. Name it what you like. This strategy carves out snippets of time on a daily basis by taking advantage of having to wait:

1. Waiting in line at the bank
2. Waiting to pick up children at school
3. Waiting in a doctor’s, dentist, veterinarian office
4. Waiting for a customer to arrive for an appointment
5. Waiting for a plane, train, bus to arrive at a destination
6. Waiting for a plane, train, or bus to depart
7. Waiting for a relative or friend who is chronically late, or chronically slow
8. Waiting for a slow computer to boot up or print-out
9. Waiting for meetings to start
10. Waiting for delays in the start of appointments with the plumber, electrician, painter, furnace technician, etc.
11. Waiting for the last step of a recipe to finish, in order to proceed to the next.
12. Waiting in the grocery store line
13. Waiting for a hair appointment
14. Waiting for a car repair
15. Can you think of other examples?

If you use these wait times to read a few pages of a book, it adds up! Add these wait times to time it takes to read a couple of pages every night before going to sleep and you have completed a book! To find the most wait time possible, always have your book with you. Unexpected delays turn into a treasured time to read.
Some say that if they do not read within large blocks of time, they cannot remember their train of thought. To overcome this difficulty, they might consider writing notes on a sticky or in the margin of the page. The effort is worth it. Humble attempts at reading turn into highly valued time spent on a daily basis. You cultivate the love of reading, which in turn provides the energy to persevere.
The Church’s Orthodox Library stocks a wonderful variety of discounted spiritual books. Topics range from parenting, the saints, anger, depression, the Theotokos, Orthodoxy, spirituality, prayer, marriage, confession, to childrens’ stories. As Patriarch Bartholomew said in his recent book, Encountering the Mystery, "Hope is essential for life....And there is always hope." "Never despair." Learn about the hope revealed in Orthodoxy. Stop in and browse.