Eleven Minutes On The Train

The journey is eleven minutes and you have decided that is not enough to open anything.

You have not decided it consciously. It is more that a book in the bag would be a slightly absurd object for eleven minutes, and by the time it was out and open the announcement would be starting, and so the bag stays shut and the eleven minutes go somewhere else.

Twice a day. Ten working days out of fourteen. And if you multiply it out, which nobody ever does, it is about nine hours a month, which is longer than any stretch of reading in your whole year.

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

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what a man ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it adds a specific volume to the pile of things a person feels behind on.

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.

What I want to look at is the discarding, because I think there is a rule running in you about what counts.

Eleven minutes is not too short. It is too small to look like reading, which is a different thing entirely.

Gather up the fragments that remain

There is an instruction in John 6 that comes after one of the most famous scenes in the Gospels, and it is strange enough that it is worth stopping on.

When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost. (John 6:12, King James Version)

Consider the situation. Thousands of people have just eaten from almost nothing. The miracle is finished. There is more food now than there was at the start.

And in that exact moment, with abundance lying all over the grass, He tells them to go and pick up the scraps.

You have nine hours a month in your own hands, and a shape that does not look like reading has never once been a shape that was not. His Spirit is standing there when the doors close, which is why twelve baskets came back full out of a field where every person had already eaten.

Not because there is a shortage. There plainly is not. Twelve baskets come back full, which is the detail Scripture keeps, and the reason given is four words: that nothing be lost.

So this is not a lesson about thrift in a lean season. It is an instruction about fragments, given at the exact moment fragments seemed least worth bothering with, and the reason is not efficiency. It is that a fragment being lost is a thing He objects to.

You are holding a fragment He would not have thrown out, and eleven minutes has never once been too small a piece to gather. John 6:12 has the gathering commanded in the middle of abundance and gives no reason but that nothing be lost, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a bag that stays shut on a platform.

There is something else in it worth having.

The disciples are the ones told to gather. He does not do it Himself and He does not leave it to somebody tidy. The instruction goes to the people who had just watched something enormous happen, and the small unglamorous job goes to them straight afterward.

You have a small job that came from the same mouth as the miracle, and picking up eleven minutes has never once been beneath a serious man. It is written gather up the fragments that remain, the command lands on the men who had just handled the loaves, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The rule is about appearance, not length

Here is the mechanism, and it is precise once it is named.

There is a rule in you about what constitutes reading, and the rule is visual rather than temporal.

Reading, according to the rule, involves settling. A chair or a seat, a book properly open, a stretch of time ahead with nothing in it. Eleven minutes standing up with a paperback bent back in one hand does not look like that, and so it does not register as reading, and so it does not get done.

Test the rule against the arithmetic and it collapses immediately. Eleven minutes at a normal pace is about five pages. Twice a day is ten. Which means the commute is the ten pages, exactly, every single working day, and the ten pages have been declined on the grounds of not looking right.

That is not a time problem. Nine hours a month is not a time problem in any sense.

You are declining a slot on grounds of appearance, and eleven minutes has never once been the reason the bag stayed shut. John 6:12 has fragments gathered specifically so that nothing be lost, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man on a platform with a book four inches from his hand.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one that keeps the rule alive.

A fragment cannot be assessed for quality. Eleven minutes will not give you the feeling of having read, that submerged feeling that made you love it in the first place, and something in you knows that and quietly refuses to trade the memory of the real thing for a scrap.

Except John 6 is explicit that a fragment is not a lesser thing to be settled for. Twelve baskets of scraps came out of that field and Scripture counted them, which is the opposite of settling.

You have permission to take the fragment without giving up the whole, and a scrap has never once been an insult to the meal it came from. The written word counts twelve baskets of leftovers as worth recording, the gathering happens in the middle of plenty and not instead of it, and His Spirit is the one who takes a rule about appearance off a man.

The eleven minutes, and away at the station

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the instruction.

Read on the train tomorrow morning for the eleven minutes, and put the book away at the station whether or not you want to.

Get it out before the doors close. Not once settled, not once a seat appears. Out of the bag on the platform, so that the eleven minutes are all reading and none of them are getting ready.

And then away at the station, mid-sentence, in the bag, walking.

You are handed a fragment on purpose, and eleven minutes have never once been a scrap beneath gathering. The Holy Spirit is the one on that platform with you, and John 6:12 commands the gathering in the middle of plenty for no reason except that nothing be lost.

Here is why the closing is an instruction.

If you carry the book off the train and finish the paragraph at your desk, the fragment has become a stretch, and a stretch needs a decision, and decisions are what the bag has been avoiding for a year. The whole strength of a fragment is that it fits inside something already happening.

And mid-sentence is fine. Better than fine. A sentence half read on the platform in the morning is a sentence waiting for you on the way home, and that is nine hours a month with a hook in every end of it.

You are able to read for eleven minutes and shut it walking, and a sentence left half finished has never once been a page wasted. John 6:12 says gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man reading standing up between two stations.

It is going to feel undignified for about three days, holding a paperback bent back in one hand with your bag on your shoulder. Let it be undignified. Nine hours a month has never once been available on better terms.

You have nine hours a month lying on the grass, and the shape of a fragment has never once decided whether it was worth gathering. It is written that nothing be lost, twelve baskets came back full from a field where nobody was hungry, and the Spirit of God is counting your eleven minutes the same way.