Read Books

In the month of August, I think it rained more days than it didn't!  Not a typical hot, dry August.  The crops still look lush, but are starting to show signs of turning.  The soybeans are showing signs of disease, but we hope that the adequate moisture will make up for any loss from the diseases.  We've had a hot humid week, but signs of fall are starting to show up.

The older I get the more I realize how blessed we are who live in this time and place in history.  The length of peace and prosperity that we enjoy in middle and upper class America is unprecedented in the history of the world.  The more global our information and economy becomes, the more we see how incredibly fortunate we are.
We didn't go anywhere over Labor Day weekend, so I finished two books that I had been reading.  They reinforced these beliefs and convictions.

The first, Twelve Years A Slave, was written in 1853 by Solomon Northrop.  He was a free, educated  black man from New York who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in Louisiana.  It was twelve years before he was able to get information on his location back to the authorities in New York in order to be rescued.
If you want an accurate picture of what it was like to be a slave in the deep South, this book gives that picture.  It is not pretty( understatement)!  This story was recently made into a movie, but I am sure the book is better.

The second book, Running For My Life, is the story of Olympic athlete Lopez Lomong.  In 1991, at the age of six, he was kidnapped by rebel soldiers while attending church with his parents during the Sudanese civil war.  Three older boys helped him escape the prison and they ran three days to the Kenyan border where they were caught and put in a refugee camp.  After ten years as an orphan in the refugee camp, the U.S. allowed some humanitarian agencies to find foster parents for 3500 of the "lost boys of Sudan".  Lopez was one of them. He is now an American citizen, a college graduate, and a professional athlete.
He now has a foundation that helps get water, food, education, and medical needs to the poor in South Sudan and Kenya.

And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.
Exodus 1:14