The shelf is above the desk and Kai can see it from where he sits, and he counted them in June because of something his wife said in passing.
Six.
Six books about one book of the Bible. Two of them are proper commentaries, one is a paperback that came free with something, one is about the historical background, and two are by the same author and cover roughly the same ground for different audiences.
He has read four of the six all the way through, which is a better record than most shelves get.
And what his wife said, and she was not being pointed, she was moving a cup, was: have you ever just read it?
He said yes automatically.
Then, that night, he worked out that the honest answer is no.
He has read every chapter of it. Several of them a great many times, in bits, as the commentary took them, with the commentary open beside it and a pen in his hand.
He has never once sat down with that book and read it from the first line to the last, in order, in one go, the way you would read anything anybody handed you.
He is forty-one. He has been at it about nine years.
And the sentence he has not said out loud, which he thought in the dark that night and then tried to un-think, is: I have been reading about the room from outside the room.
He does not want to be dramatic about it. Nothing is broken. He has learned a great deal and he is not sorry for any of the nine years.
But the book is short. He looked it up. Read aloud it would take about an hour and ten minutes.
He has spent nine years on a shelf and not an hour and ten minutes on the thing the shelf is about.
And you may have that shelf. And the honest answer to the passing question may be the same as his.
Scripture attaches a blessing to the reading itself
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it since June and it was never yours.
You are not too unequipped to read it straight. You never were. Scripture attaches a blessing to the plain act of reading and hearing, and it does it in a book people call the hardest one, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a commentary open beside it, who gives what is in there to somebody. Set it down here on this step. It is heavy and it has been over the desk in front of you all year.
Now hear it, and hear that it is the first blessing in the book.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.Revelation 1:3
Blessed is the one who reads aloud.
Read, and hear, and take to heart. Those are the three things named and not one of them is understand fully, and the blessing is not held back until the third one lands.
And notice where it appears. This is the book with the beasts and the bowls and the trumpets, the one everybody agrees is difficult, and it opens by blessing anybody who simply reads it out loud in a room.
The blessing is on the reading, and it is yours the moment you start. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who gives what is in it, and He has never once required the shelf first.
Now let me be careful here, because there is a ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.
Nothing here says the six books were a waste. They were not. Two of those authors have spent their lives on this and their work has kept people from real nonsense, and Scripture is glad of teachers and God gave them on purpose.
And nothing here says a plain reading always gets it right. It does not, and this book of all books has been read plainly by people who then did strange and harmful things, and that is exactly why careful people wrote those commentaries.
The point is narrower and it is about the order, and Scripture blesses the one who reads and hears before anybody has understood a thing, and His Spirit is the one who works during the hour and ten minutes and not only after it.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. You tried to un-think that sentence in the dark and you could not.
That is because it was true and because it was not an accusation. Nine years of care is not a failure and reading about the room was never dishonest. His Spirit put the sentence there and He does not hand a man a true sentence at midnight in order to shame him with it.
So here is the turn, and it takes an hour and ten minutes and no pen.
Read one passage with no commentary open beside it. Then stop at the end of the passage.
Or in your case the whole book, front to back, at reading speed, out loud if the house allows.
That is the whole of it. Not a rejection of the six, which stay on the shelf and are good. Not a study, which is what you would turn it into within four minutes if you let yourself.
One sitting. Beginning to end. Nothing beside it.
The blessing is on the one who reads and the ones who hear. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who gives it, and neither of them ever set a prerequisite.
I am not going to tell you what an hour and ten minutes will do to you. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is the first blessing of the hardest book, attached to the plainest possible act.
Read it straight through. Stand in the shallows.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own, out loud, in ordinary words. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours in all nine years. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Six books above my desk, you are four of you read through and none of you dishonest and you are not the room. In the name of Jesus I set you down on this step, because I can read this as it reads, and it was written to be understood and I am allowed to take it plainly.
- Nine years of reading about it from outside it, you were care and you were never once weighed against Scripture. It says blessed is the one who reads aloud and blessed are those who hear, and it says that at the front of the hardest book there is.
- Lord, You put the blessing on the reading itself and Your Spirit is the one who gives what is in it. You never set a prerequisite in front of it, and I am reading the whole of it out loud on Saturday.
Revelation 1:3
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