Looking for good time? Try "The Good Book" to inform, transform

There are few things I enjoy more than curling up with a good book, unless it's curling up with a good book, a steaming mug of coffee and a double-chocolate homemade brownie. Now that the rainy season is back to stay for a while here in the Pacific Northwest, the prospect of spending long hours reading sounds even more appealing.

I'm not sure all the reasons why some people seem to have a bent toward being voracious readers and others would rather do almost anything else — say, clean the leaves and pine needles from rain gutters, theirs and the neighbor's. But I'm definitely in the former category.

The reading odyssey began for me very early, and by the third grade, I was reading pretty much anything I could get my hands on. Books were my magical wardrobe entrance into any number of Narnian-ish adventures, expanding my world exponentially from beneath the rumpled, flashlight-illuminated covers of my bed.

Henry David Thoreau said, "Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them all." I don't know if my parents had heard that quote, but I do know that at a very young age I was encouraged to start reading the Bible. Of all the great books I've read since, nothing has caused quite the impact as "The Good Book."

If you have any familiarity with the Bible, it is hard to miss its profound influence upon Western literature (think Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Ernest Hemingway, William Shakespeare, Emily Dickinson, Toni Morrison, Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Joseph Conrad, to name a few). Add to that art, culture, language, music, law and ethics, not to mention religion, and you begin to see the impact it has made.

Biblical themes pop up in everything from political speeches to Hollywood blockbusters. In fact, you may have seen one of the national public-service billboards sponsored by the Bible Literacy Project that say: An educated person knows the Bible.

Whether one agrees or disagrees with that statement, a recent national report called the "Bible Literacy Report II: What University Professors Say Incoming Students Need to Know" revealed that 100 percent of professors surveyed (including those at Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Stanford) agreed that incoming students need to know the Bible.

Ninety-eight percent of high-school English teachers agreed, saying that basic familiarity with the Bible gives students a decided academic advantage when studying English. That being said, I've found that reading the Bible cannot only inform the head but also transform the heart.

In 1940, a group of business and professional leaders got together and founded the nonprofit, independent educational National Bible Association. The goal was to encourage Americans to read the Bible in every sector of society, regardless of religious or political distinction.

Since that time, National Bible Week has been celebrated annually during the week of Thanksgiving, which will be Nov. 18-25 this year. Many governors and mayors will proclaim it in their states and cities. Congressional co-chairs from the U.S. House and Senate will enter National Bible Week statements into the Congressional Record.

In fact, every U.S. president since Franklin D. Roosevelt has issued a National Bible Week message. Celebrities will lend their voices to radio and TV ads encouraging people to read the Bible. A broad base of faith traditions will gather in various locations to read and honor the Hebrew and Christian scriptures.

Perhaps more important than all the fanfare and hoopla, maybe someone who's heard this or that about the Bible but has never read it will pick it up and begin to read. Maybe even you.

You can go to www.nationalbible.org for more information about National Bible Week or to check out the hows and whys of Bible reading.

Amos Bronson Alcott said, "That is a good book which is opened with expectation and closed in profit." I can't think of any other book that I open with more expectation and close with more profit than the Good Book, the Bible.

Jodi Detrick serves the Northwest Ministry Network (Assemblies of God) as Women's Ministries Director. She is also a public speaker, author and life coach. Readers may send feedback to faithpage@seattletimes.com