Donation prayer

We are getting a lot of donations. The Friends of the Library seem to be gearing up to limit donations and I think the patrons, in their way, smell the blood in the water. So they've been loading up their SUVs with boxes of old books and racing over to generously donate them to us.

The classic rule of thumb for book donations is the more the person donating values them, the more they want receipts, thank yous, and to tell you how wonderful and valuable their books all are, the more utterly valueless their books will be.

Today I met a man at the back garage to collect his 700 or so books. He was downsizing, he said. It was the first of two deliveries, he said. It was a real wrench to get rid of these, he said. Some of these books were valuable antiques, he said. He didn't want to just sell them, but wanted to give them to us so we could get some really good use out of them. 

Uh oh.

It was 12 boxes of books that ultimately will cost the Friends of the Library more in getting rid of them than the small amount they can make from the very few salable ones. I think the man was a Minister. A lot of the books were from the seventies and eighties and had to do with things like "prayerwalking" and revitalizing your ministry.

As we put the last load on my two-wheeler the man sighed heavily and said "I sure wish I could keep all these books." 

And I thought "Oh man, I wish you could too."