Fifteen Minutes In The Corridor

The door opened and you put the book face down on the chair beside you like you had been caught at something.

Nobody said anything. Nobody would. The nurse was not looking and would not have cared, and the person in the bed is asleep and has been for most of the afternoon. But the book went face down anyway, fast, and you have done that four times this week.

Third chair down from the double doors. Fifteen minutes at a time, sometimes twenty. And it is the only fifteen minutes in your day that belongs to you, and you cannot take it without a small flush of something.

Before anything else, one thing, because a person can arrive at a page about reading from anywhere. If what is happening to you is heavier than a hard season, if you have been thinking about not being here at all, put this down and call or text 988 in the United States, or your own local crisis line wherever you are, today. This page cannot see you and is not qualified to. That call is.

Two things are also 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 anybody ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book.

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 flush, because something in you has decided that fifteen minutes is a theft.

It is not a theft. It is the only unattended thing in your whole week, and there is nobody it is being taken from.

I will hold thy right hand

There is a sentence in Isaiah 41 where God says what He is doing with His hands, and the detail in it is very physical.

For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee. (Isaiah 41:13, King James Version)

Notice which hand.

The right hand. Not both. That is the working hand, the one that carries and signs and holds a door, and it is the one being held. Which leaves the other hand free, and a hand that is free is a hand that can be doing something else.

That is a very small observation and it does a lot of work in a corridor.

And notice the posture. Holding a hand is not fixing a situation. Nothing in that verse says the trouble ends. It says the hand is held and the words are being said while it is held.

You are held by the working hand right now, and fifteen minutes with a book has never once been a hand let go of. Isaiah 41:13 has the right hand held and the words spoken while the trouble is still going, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over the third chair down from the double doors.

There is one more piece in it and it is about who is talking.

Saying unto thee, Fear not. The holding comes with speech. It is not a silent grip; something is being said, continuously, to the person whose hand is held, and the person is not required to say anything back.

You have somebody speaking to you while your hand is held, and being quiet in a corridor with a book has never once been a failure to attend. It is written I will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not, the holding and the speaking happen together in the middle of it, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The flush is a category error

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being careful with because it comes from a good place.

Everything else in your week is for somebody. The driving, the calls, the food nobody eats, the questions asked of people who answer in half sentences. All of it is directed outward and all of it is right.

And then fifteen minutes with a book is not for anybody, and the whole system your week is running on has no category for that. So it gets filed under the nearest available heading, which is neglect, and neglect produces a flush and a book going face down.

But look at what the fifteen minutes actually costs. Nothing. The person in the bed is asleep. Nobody is waiting on you in those minutes. There is no other use they could be put to, and there is nobody they are being taken from.

That is not a theft. It is the one unclaimed patch in a claimed week, and a system with no category for unclaimed time will misfile it every single time.

You are misfiling fifteen minutes and not stealing them, and a book in a corridor has never once been taken from the person in the bed. Isaiah 41:13 has a hand held while the situation is still going, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman putting a book face down for nobody at all.

And there is a second layer, and it is the important one on this page.

The reading is not a coping mechanism and I am not going to call it one. Nobody here is prescribing it, or telling you it will help you carry this, or turning it into a technique for a hard season. It is not treatment.

It is a good thing, and you are allowed good things in a hard month, and the reason has nothing to do with usefulness. Good things do not have to work in order to be permitted.

You have a good thing that is allowed without doing a job, and fifteen minutes has never once needed to help in order to be yours. The written word puts the holding and the speaking in the middle of the trouble rather than after it, and His Spirit is the one who permits an ordinary good thing in a hard week.

Fifteen minutes at a useful time

So here is the assignment, and the timing in it is deliberate.

Read for fifteen minutes today at a time you would normally be doing something useful.

Not in a gap. Not while waiting for something. Not in the fifteen minutes that would otherwise have gone nowhere. Take a slot that had a useful thing in it, and put the book there instead.

Fifteen minutes. Then stop.

Here is why the useful slot and not the empty one.

Reading in a gap keeps the arrangement intact: good things only in the leftovers. And the arrangement is what produced the flush, and it will not change while every good thing in your week is being taken from the offcuts.

One slot that had a job in it. That is the whole assignment, and the job will wait fifteen minutes.

You are able to take fifteen minutes out of a useful hour, and one slot given to a book has never once been a slot taken from anybody. Isaiah 41:13 says I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman reading in a corridor at three in the afternoon.

And when somebody comes through the door, leave the book where it is. Face up, in your lap. That is the second half of the assignment and it is harder than the fifteen minutes.

You have no reason to hide a book from anybody, and a page turned in a hospital corridor has never once needed an explanation. It is written saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee, the words come while the hand is held and the trouble is still going, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a corridor today.