It starts with trying to read the microwave instructions on the back of the packet in the kitchen, and having to move into some better light. Then you notice you’re habitually setting the zoom in Microsoft Word to 200 per cent. The crunch comes when it starts to affect the really important things: you’re some distance from the television and realize you can’t quite make out the score at the bottom of the screen.
You start moaning about it, and your wife peers over the top of her reading glasses and somewhat smirkingly suggests, “Perhaps it’s time you had your eyes checked again”.
But she doesn’t understand. It is absolutely NOT the time to get my eyes checked, because there is every chance that if I do, I’ll end up with reading glasses!
As someone who is only just starting to approach the fringes of very early middle age (at 47), I’m obviously not yet a candidate for reading glasses. And from talking to those poor aged souls who have them already, I’m in no hurry. They’re a nuisance. You’re always losing them. And worst of all, they rather cruelly shatter the illusion that you’re still really in your very very very late 30s.
No, I’m not keen on reading glasses. Which is why I’m leading a crusade for a more normal and readable font size here at Matthias Media—starting with this Resource Talk. (I tried to get the entire Briefing upgraded by a font size or two, but was overruled by my 30-something colleagues.)
Now some refer to this as ‘large print’ publishing, but I think that’s both ageist and unfair. The print doesn’t look particularly large both to me and most people I talk to. It would be more accurate, to my way of thinking, to label a great deal of what is published as ‘extremely small and hard to read’ publishing.
In any case, let me tell you about three excellent ‘readable’ ministry resources for those of you who, like me, are wanting to stave off the specs—and for those who have now gotten right into the heart of middle age (post-60) and need larger print even with their specs.
The first is a version of our perennially popular evangelistic tract, Two ways to live: The choice we all face. It’s rather neutrally called the ‘booklet edition’, and is pretty much identical to the classic Two ways to live tract that sells in the hundreds of thousands each year—except that you don’t need a magnifying glass to read it. It’s very useful, and fits nicely into your purse or man-bag.
The second has been one of our bestsellers over the past three years: John Chapman’s Making the Most of the Rest of Your Life. This warmly written evangelistic book is especially aimed at those who are coming to realize that there is less of our lives in front of us than behind. But the book is not about making the most of the few years left; it’s about making the most of the eternity that stretches beyond death for all of us.
The third resource should be just back from the printers by the time you read this. It’s a larger print edition of The Essential Jesus, the giveaway version of Luke’s Gospel that has been distributed in such massive numbers throughout 2009. Again, it’s identical to the smaller print version in content: a brief introduction sets the scene by telling the ‘story so far’ of what has happened in the Bible, then comes a fresh translation of Luke’s Gospel, and finally there is a summary that ties the threads together using the framework of Two ways to live.
For more details about this new edition of The Essential Jesus, as well as the other two resources I’ve mentioned, log onto the electronical internet at www.matthiasmedia.com.au, go to the ‘View’ menu in your browser and click ‘Zoom in’.
