I love audio books. I have tons of them. I went into a book store recently and high above the bookshelves I saw the section marked, “audio books.” It was like a magnet drawing me across the huge expanse of books. I love that I can “read” a book while I am exercising or driving. I especially love listening to fiction books because I typically am reading non-fiction as I study each week for sermons.
This particular book store sells older books for a cheaper price, so I was hoping to pick something up that was deeply discounted.
From across the store it looked like they had a huge amount of boxed sets of audios books. I imagined it would be a great deal-2 or 3 books wrapped together. They put a popular book with a less well known book (ie something that did not sell). I have sometimes bought sets like this and listened to the reject book and been very pleasantly surprised.
As my feet slid across the carpet my eyes kept trying to make out the different books. Eventually, distance and eyesight met and I could see everything that was on the shelf. There was not an audio book anywhere. Insead, a battalion of bobble heads stared intently at me. I was disappointed. Then I was amazed. There was a lot of bobbleheads.
I looked at the sign. It was taped on to the frame at the top and curling at the bottom. The “audio books” was covering up what had been underneath. No one had bothered to update this sign.
The gap between what we say and who we really are is important to monitor. We say that we are Christians, but does our life give the evidence that we really are following his ways? We put up signs telling people we are a church, but do we give evidence of being the community of Christ? If people came looking from what we had advertised, would they find the words of faith coming to life or empty bobble heads? Sometimes I wonder.