Eleven Books And I Opened Two

They have been beside your bed a long while now, in a stack, and on Sunday for no reason you can name you counted them.

Eleven. And you have opened two of them.

Before Sunday it was books. After Sunday it is a sum, and the sum has produced something you have not shaken since. Not guilt exactly. Something lower and more constant, that turns up whenever your eye goes to that corner of the room.

And you have moved them to vacuum around, and set a glass on top of them, and taken things off and put them back on again, and never once picked one up to read it.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what a woman ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it makes twelve.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

And one more thing that is not coming, and this one is the important one on this page.

Nobody is going to suggest you get rid of any of them. Not tonight and not ever. That stack stays exactly the size it is. What changes tonight is what it means, and not how tall it is.

Of making many books there is no end

There is a sentence near the end of Ecclesiastes that has been read as a warning for so long that people have stopped noticing what it actually lets a person off.

And further, by these, my son, be admonished: of making many books there is no end; and much study is a weariness of the flesh. (Ecclesiastes 12:12, King James Version)

Of making many books there is no end.

That was written a very long time before anybody had a bedside stack, and it means the set was never finishable. Not then, not now, not by one soul who ever lived. There is no version of a life in which the books get caught up with.

Which means the eleven are not a backlog, because a backlog is by definition a thing that could be cleared. An unclearable set is not a backlog. It is just a supply.

You are looking at a supply and not a backlog, and eleven unread books have never once been a set anybody could have finished. Ecclesiastes 12:12 says of making many books there is no end, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a corner of a bedroom on a Sunday evening.

And read the second half, because the second half is where you are let off.

Much study is a weariness of the flesh. Said plainly, as a fact about bodies, with no disapproval anywhere in it and no hint that a person ought to manage more than they are managing.

You have tiredness named in Scripture as an ordinary fact, and being worn out by study has never once been a fault in you. It is written and much study is a weariness of the flesh, the verse states it without one word of reproach attached, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The counting turned a supply into a charge

Here is the mechanism, and it happened in about two minutes on a Sunday.

Before the count, that corner held possibilities. Eleven separate things a person might feel like on a given evening, and any one of them could be picked up without reference to the others.

The count fused them. Eleven is one number, and one number is one object, and the object now has a property: mostly unread. And a single object with a shortfall attached is not a supply any more, it is a charge.

And a charge cannot be browsed. You do not reach idly into an accusation. So the stack got moved for the vacuuming and had a glass set on it and was never once opened, because opening it would be engaging the whole eleven at once.

You are unable to reach into a thing that got fused, and one number has never once been a truthful description of eleven books. Ecclesiastes 12:12 declares the set unfinishable rather than behind, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman who has been carrying a Sunday afternoon around for months.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one worth being tender about.

Every one of those eleven arrived out of a real moment. A shop, a gift, a recommendation from somebody you like, a title you saw and wanted. Eleven live moments over some years, all of them good.

The counting summarized eleven good moments into one bad fact, and a summary is not the truth about a stack.

You have eleven good moments in that corner, and a summary has never once been the same thing as the record it replaced. The written word names the set as endless and the weariness as ordinary and reproaches nobody for either, and His Spirit is the one who breaks a fused object back into things.

One off the pile, where you actually sit

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately about location rather than reading.

Take one book off the pile tonight and put it somewhere you will actually sit.

One. Off the top or out of the middle, chosen badly, and it does not matter which.

Not a sort. Not an order. Not a decision about the rest of them, and nothing at all about reducing the stack. Ten stay exactly where they are.

Then carry the one to where you actually end up sitting: the rocker, the kitchen table, the arm of the couch.

You have a set nobody could ever have finished, and a stack of eleven has never once been a backlog. His Spirit is in that corner of the room now, and it is written that of making many books there is no end, with no reproach anywhere in the sentence.

Here is why moving one is the whole of it.

The stack is fused, so nothing can be taken from it. Removing one and setting it down somewhere ordinary is what unfuses it, and one book on the arm of a chair carries no number and no shortfall. It is a book. A person can pick up a book.

And where you actually sit rather than where you mean to sit, because a book left in the room nobody uses is a book that has been moved into storage.

You are able to take one thing out of a charge, and moving one book across a room has never once been too small to matter. Ecclesiastes 12:12 says of making many books there is no end, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman carrying one book to a rocker.

Read ten pages of it if you feel like it. Not required, and not the measure of tonight. If it only gets moved and you go to bed, the assignment is done.

You have a stack that is allowed to stay eleven, and a pile that never got smaller has never once been a pile you failed. It is written of making many books there is no end, the endlessness is stated as a fact about the world rather than as a rebuke, and the Spirit of God is saying it over that corner tonight.