I Know The Ending And I Read It Anyway

You know what happens on page three hundred and you started again at page one on Tuesday.

And somebody asked you about it, kindly, and the question was the obvious one. If you know how it ends, what are you getting out of it. And you did not have an answer, and you have not had one since, and it has taken a small amount of the pleasure out of the reading.

Because it is a fair question if reading is what most people think it is, which is finding out what happens. On that definition, a known ending empties the whole thing, and a man rereading a book he can summarize is doing something with no content in 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 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 that definition, because God describes His own way of seeing things and it is the opposite of suspense.

Declaring the end from the beginning

There is a claim in Isaiah 46 about how God relates to a story, and it is stated as one of the things that distinguishes Him.

Declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done. (Isaiah 46:10, King James Version)

Read the order in that sentence.

Declaring the end from the beginning. Not discovering the end at the end. The knowledge of how it comes out is present at page one, and God offers that as a description of Himself rather than as a limitation on His enjoyment of anything.

And it is in a passage about who He is as against every alternative. The knowing of the outcome in advance is put forward as the mark of the real one.

You have the outcome known from the start, and a known ending has never once emptied the pages before it. Isaiah 46:10 has the end declared from the beginning and offers that as a description of God Himself, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a well read paperback on a low wall.

There is a second half and it goes further.

And from ancient times the things that are not yet done. So the not yet done things are already spoken of. Which means the whole of Scripture is written by somebody who knows the ending and it never once reduces His interest in the middle.

You have a middle that keeps its content, and the end being known has never once made the two hundred and ninety nine pages before it empty. It is written and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, the outcome is spoken of in advance and the interest in the middle is undiminished, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

Suspense was never the content

Here is the mechanism, and it is the answer you did not have on Tuesday.

Suspense is a first read only and it is not the main thing in the book.

Test that against ordinary experience. A movie seen six times. A song whose next note anybody could predict. The road driven every day. In every case knowing what comes next does not empty the thing; it frees a person to attend to what is actually there.

And that is the answer. On a first read, almost the whole of the attention goes on what happens next, which is a demanding question that uses everything available. On a second read that question is answered, and the attention it was using is free for everything else: how it is built, what a person says two hundred pages before it matters, why one sentence is placed where it is.

Nothing is being lost here. A different and larger set of things is arriving, and none of them were available the first time.

You are getting what a first read cannot give, and knowing the outcome has never once been the same thing as having nothing left to read. Isaiah 46:10 has the end declared at the beginning as a description of God and not as a loss to Him, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who has been quietly enjoying it less since Tuesday.

And there is a second layer, and it is why the question landed.

Nobody has words for the second read. There is no ordinary phrase for it, so when the question comes there is nothing to hand anybody, and the silence gets taken as evidence that there is nothing there.

There is something there. It just has no name in ordinary speech, and a thing with no name is very hard to defend in a kitchen.

You have something real with no name attached to it, and having no words for a thing has never once meant the thing was empty. The written word describes the outcome as known from the beginning and the middle as fully attended to, and His Spirit is the one who hands a man the answer he did not have.

Ten pages of the one you already know

So here is the assignment, and there is a small addition to it.

Read ten pages of a book you already know.

That one. The one where you know what happens on page three hundred. Ten pages of it, anywhere, and preferably not the beginning.

And while you read, notice one thing you did not notice the first time. One. A sentence placed early that is doing work for something much later, or a person behaving in a way that only makes sense once you know where they end up.

You have God's own posture toward a settled story, and a known ending has never once emptied the pages before it. The Holy Spirit is the one on that wall with you, and Isaiah 46:10 declares the end from the beginning and offers that as a description of Himself.

Here is why the noticing.

You did not have an answer on Tuesday, and one noticed thing is an answer. Next time somebody asks, you will be able to say: on the second read you can see that this line is set up two hundred pages before it pays off, and here is the line.

That is not a defense. It is a description of what the second read actually contains, and it is the thing there was no phrase for.

You are able to name one thing a second read gave you, and a known ending has never once been a reading with nothing in it. Isaiah 46:10 says declaring the end from the beginning, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man noticing a line he missed the first time.

And do not go back to page one to be thorough. Anywhere in it. The middle is where the second read pays.

You have God's own posture toward a story you already know the end of, and reading with the outcome settled has never once been a lesser way to read. It is written and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, the knowing is stated as the mark of the real God and the interest in the middle is never reduced by it, and the Spirit of God is saying it on that wall today.