Reading To My Mother Who Forgets

She asked you twice in twenty minutes where you were up to, and the second time you nearly stopped.

Not out of impatience. Out of a question that arrived and that you have not been able to put down since. The question is whether any of this is landing anywhere.

Because you read for twenty minutes, and she asked twice, and by tomorrow the chapter will be gone entirely and she will not know you were there yesterday. And a man does the arithmetic on that and comes out with something that feels like futility.

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 what the twenty minutes actually was, because you have been measuring it with the wrong instrument.

You have been measuring what stays. That hour was never about what stays.

When I am old and grayheaded

There is a request in Psalm 71 made by somebody who names their own age out loud, and what they ask for is very specific.

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. (Psalm 71:18, King James Version)

Read what is asked for.

Forsake me not. That is a request for presence. Not for restoration, not for capacity, not for the years back. Do not leave me here, which is the plainest thing a person can ask.

And notice what the psalmist is doing with the request. He wants presence in order to keep showing God's strength to the next lot, which means the value he is asking for is in the continuing rather than in anything being recovered.

You are giving presence and not information, and twenty minutes she will not remember has never once been twenty minutes that did not land. Psalm 71:18 asks for presence rather than for restoration and ties the value to the continuing, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over an armchair in a sunny room.

There is one more thing in that psalm worth having.

The psalm does not treat old age as the part of life where things stop counting. It names the age plainly, without softening it, and then keeps making requests as though the requests still matter, which they do.

You have hours with your mother that still count, and a chapter that will be gone by tomorrow has never once been an hour that did not happen. It is written now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not, the psalm names the age plainly and keeps asking, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The instrument is wrong

Here is the mechanism, and it is a measurement problem rather than a spiritual one.

The twenty minutes have been measured by what she keeps, and what she keeps was never what was being offered.

Think about what actually happened in that room. Two people were together. One voice was going, steadily, in a room that is quiet most of the day. She was not alone, for twenty minutes, and she knew it while it was happening, and she was following a story that she was enjoying at the time she was enjoying it.

Every one of those things was real, and every one of them happened, and not one of them requires tomorrow.

The question about what stays belongs to a different activity. It is the question anybody would ask about a lecture. What happened in that room was company, and company does not accumulate. It occurs.

You are offering company and not content, and a twenty minute hour has never once needed to survive until tomorrow to have been real. Psalm 71:18 asks for presence in plain words and never for the years to be given back, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man on a stool beside an armchair.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one that has been costing you.

The doubt makes you stop early. You read fifteen minutes instead of thirty, or you skip a day, because a small voice keeps asking what the point is, and the doubt does not stop the visits but it thins them.

So the wrong instrument has not just given you a wrong reading. It has begun to reduce the thing it was measuring.

You have permission to stop asking what the point is, and a doubt about tomorrow has never once been a fact about today. The written word asks only that He not go away and ties the worth to the continuing, and His Spirit is the one who takes a wrong instrument out of a man's hand.

One page out loud tonight

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately open about who.

Read one page out loud to somebody in your house tonight.

One page. Not a chapter, not thirty minutes, and not a plan for the visits.

And it does not have to be to her. If she is not in your house, read a page out loud to whoever is: your wife, a child, a neighbor who has come round. And if she is in your house, then one page, and no measuring afterward.

You are giving presence and not information, and an hour that will be gone by tomorrow has never once been an hour that did not happen. The Spirit of God is present in that sitting room, and it is written now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not.

Here is why the assignment is a page rather than a visit.

The doubt attaches itself to length. Thirty minutes gives it a great deal to work with; one page gives it almost nothing, because one page is finished before the arithmetic can start.

And doing it to somebody else once, in the same week, is useful in a way that is hard to explain until it happens. It reminds you that reading out loud is company in every direction, and that the company was never contingent on the listener's memory.

You are able to read one page out loud and skip the arithmetic, and a page said aloud has never once needed to be recalled to have counted. Psalm 71:18 says forsake me not, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man reading one page out loud without measuring anything afterward.

And when she asks where you are up to, tell her, and carry on from there. That is not a failure in the hour. That is the hour.

You have an hour that occurred and cannot be undone by tomorrow, and a thing that happened has never once stopped having happened. It is written until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, the value is placed in the continuing rather than in what is retained, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a sitting room today.