Day 2 - The Year of Living Biblically (Give)

Day 2 (November 8, 2010):
     Today I gave away a book.  "The Year of Living Biblically" by A.J. Jacobs.  It's a truly funny and fascinating book. Jacobs writes for Esquire magazine and he likes to experiment on his own life and then write about the results.  (Perhaps my decision to throw, give and sell stuff each day and to document the process was subconsciously inspired by Jacobs!)  Jacobs, who started his experiment thoroughly secular ("I’m officially Jewish but I’m Jewish in the same way the Olive Garden is an Italian restaurant"), does his best to live a year of his life taking the Bible literally.  He even stones an adulterer - a septuagenarian adulterer - in Central Park... using pebbles.
     Bringing myself to give away this book was harder than I thought it would be.  You have to understand: I'm the type who really doesn't even like to loan out books.  They rarely come back!  And I love my books.  I underline little passages for which I'm just certain some day I'll have a great need.  But they take up a lot of space, they're heavy and, when we leave for the mission field, I am not going to pay to store a half ton of paper somewhere, no matter what's written on it. 
     So I grabbed one book off my shelf this morning before I left for school.  Sure, I could have taken it to Half Price Books and gotten a buck fifty for it, but it's such a good book that I wanted to pass it on personally.  I intended to give it to the 11th grade English teacher next door to me, but I got busy and forgot about it throughout the day.  After school a former student stopped in my room.  She's something else - my nickname for her is "Satan".  But it's a term of endearment.  She's made it clear that she does not care one bit for the church ... I'm not real certain where she stands on the subject of God Almighty Himself, though.  I offered her the book.  She seemed suspicious, but she took it.  I assured her it was not an explicitly "religious" book.  (But I didn't mention how Jacobs ends his year long experiment as what I would call a seeker - one who even attends Jewish services on a regular basis and finds solace in prayer!)  I think she'll read it.  I hope we get to have a conversation about it some day...