You Are Allowed To Read It

Ten past six in the morning, and she is at the kitchen table with the big light off and the little one on over the cooker, because she likes it that way and because the boiler takes an hour.

She has the book open. She has three others next to it, squared up, because she is that kind of woman. Bookmarks in all of them. A pencil.

She reads: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened.

And she gets exactly that far.

Because a voice arrives. Not a wicked voice. A perfectly pleasant, perfectly educated voice, belonging to a man she heard speak at a conference in another decade, and it says, kindly, the way it always says it: now of course, in the original, and taken in its proper context, that is really addressed to...

And her hand goes out for the second book.

She has been doing this at this table for eleven years. She could not tell you the last time she got to the end of a sentence of Scripture on her own. Not because anybody forbade her. Because somewhere along the way she picked up the idea that the reading is the easy bit and the being allowed to take it is a qualification she does not have, and every morning she comes to the table like somebody visiting a library that belongs to other people.

Then, one Saturday, the granddaughter is staying.

Seven years old, down early, one sock, hair like a hedge, and she climbs onto the chair and says, "Read it out loud."

So she does. She reads it right through, because a child is not going to sit still for a footnote. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

And the child says, "So He carries it?"

And the grandmother opens her mouth to explain.

And there is nothing there.

There is nothing to explain. The child has it. The child got it on the first pass with no equipment at all, and she sits there at ten past six with a sentence going through her like heat through a wire, and the little girl slides off the chair and goes to find her other sock, and the woman stays where she is, holding the edge of the table.

Eleven years. And it was reaching for her the whole time.

Now hear me. Because that woman is you, and I know she is you, and I want you to stay in the room for the next part.

You open it, and before you are through the line, somebody is standing beside it, explaining. And you close it and you feel the same thing you always feel, which is not doubt exactly. It is smaller and meaner than doubt. It is the feeling of not being qualified to be in your own Father's house.

It gives light to the simple

Look at what God actually promised, and who He promised it to.

The unfolding of your words gives light; it gives understanding to the simple.Psalm 119:130

Now, that word "simple" is not an insult and it never was. It does not mean foolish. It means the open one. The uncomplicated one. The one who has not got the training, the languages, the shelf, the confidence, the fifteen years. It is the person who comes with nothing but their two eyes and their hunger.

And that is precisely the person the promise runs toward. The light does not go to the qualified. It goes to the open. God did not say the unfolding of His words rewards expertise. He said it gives light, and He said who it gives understanding to, and He named your kind on purpose.

And He went further than that, long before.

He said this commandment is not too hard for you, and it is not far off. It is not up in heaven so that you would have to say, who will go up and get it and bring it back and read it to us. It is not across the sea so that somebody has to cross for us and fetch it and tell us what it said.

Then He says the thing I want in your chest tonight: the word is very near you. It is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can do it.

Do you hear the shape of the objection He is answering? It is not I do not believe it. It is somebody else has to go and get it for me. That is the complaint God stands in front of and refuses. And that, beloved, is what you have been doing at your kitchen table for eleven years. You have been sending people over the sea for a sentence that was already in your mouth.

Now let me hold both sides of this, because I will not push you out of one ditch into another one. Scripture is the ground under both of them and His Spirit is the one who keeps a reader steady between them.

The men and women who give their lives to the languages, the manuscripts, the histories, the long careful work: they are a gift, and I thank God for them out loud. They are the reason the book is in your hands in words you can read at all. Nobody is being dismissed in this message. A lamp is a good and holy thing to be handed. A lamp is just not the sun, and you were never meant to sit in the dark with your hands folded until somebody arrives carrying one.

And I am not telling you that whatever you think first is always what it means. That is not true and I am not going to hand you a comfortable thing that will fall over later. Some of it is hard. Peter said plainly that some of what Paul wrote is hard to understand, and Peter walked with the man. When it is hard, ask, read, take the help gladly and take it often. Help is a gift. It has just never been a gate.

Here is the turn, and it is the whole message.

You have been waiting for a qualified authority to be present before you are allowed to read.

He is present. That is written, and His Spirit is the one who is in the room while a person reads.

On a road out of Jerusalem, two ordinary heartbroken people walked seven miles with a stranger who opened the Scriptures to them, and their hearts burned inside them before they had the first idea who He was. Later He opened their minds to understand. Not a course. Not a credential. The Author, walking, explaining His own book to two people who would never have been asked to teach anybody anything.

That is not a technique you have to earn. That is who He is, and He does it at kitchen tables at ten past six in the morning.