Ninety Of Them And Nobody Can See

There are ninety unread books on that device and not one person in your life knows.

Which sounds like it should make it lighter. A visible stack is a stack somebody might comment on; ninety files are between you and a screen and nobody will ever mention them. And yet it is heavier, measurably, and you could not explain why until now.

Here is why. A visible pile is a thing in a room. It has a size, it takes up space, and it can be moved. Ninety titles in a list is not in a room at all. It has no size, it cannot be moved, and it does not have a top.

So it is not a pile. It is a number that lives nowhere and cannot be touched.

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 ninety one.

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 there is no rule about devices coming.

What I want to look at is the invisibility, because the invisibility is not privacy here.

Something unseen by everybody is not lighter. It is only unhandleable, and unhandleable is why nothing on that list gets read.

Thy Father which seeth in secret

There is a phrase Jesus repeats three times in Matthew 6, and every time it is meant as a comfort rather than a warning.

That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly. (Matthew 6:4, King James Version)

Read what secret means in that chapter.

It does not mean unknown. It means unwitnessed by people, and then immediately, in the same sentence, fully seen by God. Thy Father which seeth in secret. The seeing is asserted as the reason the secret place is safe.

And the whole passage is about how the good things go better when nobody is watching. Alms in secret, prayer in a closet with the door shut, fasting with a normal face on. Three times, the unseen version is called the better one.

So unseen is not the same as unaccounted for. In Matthew 6 unseen means seen by one and not by many, and that is presented as an advantage.

You are fully seen where nobody else is looking, and ninety invisible books have never once made you unaccounted for. Matthew 6:4 has the secret place named as the one God Himself sees into and calls that the safe one, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a list nobody has ever mentioned.

There is one more piece and it matters for a pile with no top.

Shall reward thee openly. The passage does not leave the unseen thing forever unseen. What happens in the closet comes out somewhere, in time, in His way, and that is the pattern rather than the exception.

You have a hidden thing that does not stay hidden forever, and a list nobody can see has never once been a list that does not count. It is written thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly, the secret and the open are joined in the one sentence, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

An invisible pile cannot be handled

Here is the mechanism, and it is the reason ninety is worse than eleven.

Everything that gets a physical pile read is a physical act.

You walk past a stack, something catches your eye, you pick it up, you put it on the arm of a chair. Those are hand movements, and hand movements are how books get started. A pile on a nightstand has a top, and a top is a suggestion.

A list of ninety has no top. It has a scroll, and a scroll has no end, and a scroll is designed for browsing rather than for taking. Nothing in that interface corresponds to picking a thing up and carrying it four feet into another room.

So the ninety are not being ignored. They are unreachable in the specific sense that there is no available hand movement, and reading has always been a physical business.

You are looking at a pile with no top, and ninety titles in a list have never once been ninety things you avoided. Matthew 6:4 puts the seeing into the secret place rather than leaving the secret unattended, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman scrolling a list she cannot reach into.

And there is a second thing, and it is the one the invisibility does.

Because nobody can see it, nothing about it is ever normal. A visible stack gets mentioned at a dinner and somebody else says they have one too, and the mentioning makes it ordinary. Ninety files never get mentioned, so they never become ordinary, and a thing that is never ordinary keeps its full weight indefinitely.

You have a weight that nothing has ever been allowed to make ordinary, and a list kept private has never once been a list held against you. The written word calls the unwitnessed place the one God sees into and treats that as its safety, and His Spirit is the one who makes an invisible thing handleable.

One made visible, and ten pages

So here is the assignment, and making it visible is the whole of it.

Pick one off that device tonight, put it on the home screen or write the title on a card by the chair, and read ten pages.

One. Chosen badly. Not the best one on the list and not the one that seems most worth the time.

Then make it exist somewhere. Put it on the home screen where the icon is a thing you see. Or, and this is better if you can be bothered, write the title on a card or a scrap and leave it where you sit. It looks absurd and it works, because now there is one object in a room instead of a scroll in a cloud.

You are seen where nobody else is looking, and ninety invisible titles have never once left you unaccounted for. The Holy Spirit is the one in that sunroom with you, and Matthew 6:4 names the secret place as the one the Father Himself sees into and calls that its safety.

Then ten pages of it.

Here is why the visible step and not just the reading.

The problem is that nothing on that list occupies space. One title on a card occupies space. It has a location, it has a top, and it can be picked up and put down, which puts it back in the world where reading actually happens.

And nobody is asking you to delete anything. Not one of the ninety. That is not coming from here tonight or ever. The list stays exactly as long as it is.

You are able to make one of ninety exist in a room, and a title on a scrap of card has never once been too small a thing to do. Matthew 6:4 says thy Father which seeth in secret, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman writing a title on a card at nine in the evening.

You may feel silly writing it down when the book is right there on the device. Feel silly and write it. The device is where the ninety live and the card is where the one lives, and one is the number that gets read.

You have one book in a room tonight, and ninety in a list have never once been able to compete with one on a card. It is written himself shall reward thee openly, the secret is joined to the open in the same breath, and the Spirit of God is joining it here.