My sister belonged to a book club. Soon she hadn't time to read her books, but I did. This was a low point in my young life. People had failed me so far. My father would rather talk about what he had had for lunch than show any interest in his son.
Packages arrived at my quiet home. One was a paisley jacketed volume, lavishly illustrated of a world I knew nothing of. People sitting under trees, drinking wine, some of a man merely thinking. I was thinking too. I did not like what surrounded me, people or things. How many young people know what they hate, but not what they love?
I put away the volume, but it stayed in my mind. I was surrounded by industry, workers doing their jobs, and little else. I saw nothing that would appeal to a young man like me. So many questions were on my mind. No one had the answers. I reopened the volume, out of curiosity. Beautiful illustrations beguiled me. Then the words. It was the Rubiyat of Omar Khyyam. Omar had all the questions I had. I was awakened. Here was a man who thought.
Omar did not have the answers I needed, but my mind was turned on, never to be turned off. I did not understand yet, but this was my preparation. Later on, not much later, I found Christ. Jesus had the answers.
With them the Seed of Wisdom did I sow,
And with my own hand laboured it to grow:
And this was all the harvest that I reaped-
I came like water, and like the wind I go.
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