Photo and Commentary ©2024 by Maylan Schurch
Friday, July 12, 2024
This past Thursday, just outside a clothing store near Southcenter Mall, I noticed this collection of mostly books. Every once in awhile I’ll notice little stacks of miscellany behind stores’ exterior pillars, mostly left by homeless people who’ve either discarded such items or are storing them temporarily.
But this collection was interesting. For one thing, aside from what may be a scarf or blouse, it’s just books. The yellow-and-red hardback on top of the left stack is most likely an action novel, and the colorful item a little over halfway down in the right stack is probably a kids’ picture book. But most of the rest have to do with business or motivation. Going from top down on the right-hand stack: Successful Business Forecasting, The Manager’s Desk Reference, Zig Ziglar’s Secrets of Closing the Sale, Raise the Bar, and some thinner books which might be children’s literature.
The first readable spine below the action novel is Basic Goals in Selling. Then come a large number of thinner hardcovers, all of which seem to be directed to kids, yet all of which deal in some way with striving for success: A Consumer’s Guide for Kids, A Kids’ Guide to Managing Time, A Kids’ Guide to Managing Money, and many more. Four books up from the right-hand sub-stack is my favorite: Surviving Fights With Your Brothers and Sisters.
Questions explode like popcorn in my brain: Whose books are (or were) these? Why were they left in such a concentrated quantity outside this totally unrelated store? (The nearest thrift store is many blocks away, as is a Half-Price Books store.) Is someone coming back for them? Are their former owner and any progeny now so successful that they don’t need this wisdom any more? Or did the whole family sigh, give up the battle, and dump the lot?
Can you spot where I’m going with this? I’ll bet you can. I happen to own a large book—and you probably do as well—which distills the wisdom of nurturing true success as well as dexterously dodging failure. Its pages don’t contain bullet points and pithy sidebars, just stories, proverbs, prophecy, and a multifaceted introduction to a celestial CEO who really likes us and wants to get to know us better.
For a synopsis of this beloved Book, click the link just below:
https://www.bibleinfo.com/en/topics/books-of-the-bible