I Move The Pile When People Come Over

Twenty minutes before anybody arrives, the stack goes in the closet.

Not consciously, exactly. It is part of the tidying, in the same motion as the shoes and the mail, and if somebody asked you why you would say it looks untidy, which is true and is not the reason.

The reason is that eleven unread books, visible, in a room, with somebody in it who might glance at them, constitutes a statement. And the statement is something like: this man buys books he does not read. And you would rather not make that statement to a person who came over for dinner.

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 man ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it adds one more thing to be 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 closet, because the closet is the tell and I think it is telling you something useful.

A thing you hide from guests has become a thing about you. And while it is a thing about you, you cannot pick anything off it.

Thou hast searched me and known me

There is an opening to Psalm 139 that removes the possibility of managing an impression, and it removes it before the psalm asks anything of anybody.

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. (Psalm 139:1, King James Version)

Notice the tense. Thou hast searched me. Past, completed, done.

The searching is not something that might happen later depending on how things go. It has already been carried out, in full, and the knowing is already in place before the psalm gets to a single request.

And look at the detail level. Downsitting and uprising. Sitting down and getting up, which is the most ordinary information about a person there is, and thoughts known from a distance before they arrive.

Nothing in that verse is available to be managed. There is no version of the room a person could arrange.

You are already fully known before anybody arrives, and a stack in a closet has never once hidden anything from the one who counts. Psalm 139:1 has the searching completed and the knowing in place before the psalm makes one request, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a man tidying at half past six.

There is something else in it, and it is the reason the psalm is a comfort rather than a threat.

David does not go on to apologize. Read the rest of it: he goes on to say the knowledge is too wonderful for him and asks to be led. Being completely known turns out to be the safe place in that psalm rather than the exposed one.

You have complete knowledge already on the record and no case pending, and being seen has never once been the same thing as being assessed. It is written thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, and David treats that as wonderful rather than as a problem, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

Hiding it makes it a statement

Here is the mechanism, and it runs backwards from what you would expect.

The pile did not become a statement and then get hidden. It got hidden, and the hiding is what made it a statement.

Think about what happens in the act. Twenty minutes before people arrive, you make a judgment that this object would be read by a guest as information about your character. That judgment is the thing that turns eleven books into a claim. Before the closet, they were books on a table.

And once an object carries a claim about you, your relationship to it changes completely. You cannot browse it. You cannot pull one out on a whim, because whims are not an appropriate posture toward evidence, and a thing you hide from guests is filed with the evidence.

So the closet costs you the reading. Not directly. It just makes the stack into a category you cannot casually reach into, and casual reaching is how a book gets started.

You are hiding the thing that made it a statement, and eleven books on a table have never once said one word about you. Psalm 139:1 has the knowing completed before any impression could be managed, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who tidies away a stack he could have been reading from.

And there is a second layer, and it is the honest one.

Nobody who comes to your house is going to read that stack as an indictment. If they notice at all, they will notice that there are books, and about half of them will think about their own stack. The audience you are managing does not exist, and the cost of managing it is real.

You have an audience that was never there, and a guest glancing at a table has never once formed the verdict you assigned them. The written word puts the complete knowledge in place before the first request and calls it too wonderful, and His Spirit is the one who takes an imaginary jury out of a room.

Leave it out, and take one off it

So here is the assignment, and it is in two halves.

Leave the pile where it is next time somebody comes over, and take one off it and put it somewhere you sit.

Leave it out. On the table, on the nightstand, wherever it lives. Do not tidy it into the closet, and if somebody glances at it, let them glance.

And nobody is suggesting you reduce it. That is not coming from here tonight or ever. The stack stays exactly the size it is.

Then take one off it and put it on the arm of the couch or the counter or wherever you actually sit.

You are already known down to the downsitting and the uprising, and a tidied room has never once changed what is on the record. The Spirit of God is present in that hallway, and it is written that thou hast searched me, and known me, in the past tense and already finished.

Here is why both halves and not just the second one.

Leaving it out is what retires the statement. A thing you do not hide is not evidence, and once it stops being evidence it goes back to being eleven possibilities, and one of eleven possibilities can be picked up without ceremony.

And moving one is what proves it. An object you can take a piece off is not a monument. It is a shelf with bad manners, and a shelf with bad manners has got more reading done than a tidy room ever has.

You are able to leave a stack visible and take one off the top of it, and a book on a table has never once been an argument against the man who owns it. Psalm 139:1 says O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man who did not tidy at half past six.

It will feel exposed for about the first ten minutes of the evening. Let it feel exposed. Nobody in the room is doing the arithmetic you have been doing on their behalf.

You have nothing pending and nothing to arrange, and a room set up for a jury has never once been a room a man could relax in. It is written thou understandest my thought afar off, the knowing is complete and it is called wonderful, and the Spirit of God is saying that over a living room tonight.