Small Reading Is Still Reading

You think ten pages is what people do when they cannot manage a book.

You would not put it that bluntly, but that is the shape of it. Somewhere in you there is a hierarchy, and at the top of it is the person who reads for two hours with a shut door, and near the bottom is the person who does ten pages before bed and calls it reading, and you would rather do nothing than be near the bottom.

So you do nothing. Eleven years of nothing, in a house with books in it, held in place by a preference for not being the kind of man who takes the small version.

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 a specific volume to the pile of things a person is 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 hierarchy, because I do not think you built it and I do not think you have examined it.

Small is not the bottom of anything. In the kingdom small is where the enormous things start, and Jesus says so on purpose.

The least of all seeds

There is a parable in Matthew 13 that is two sentences long and that puts a specific number at the bottom of the scale on purpose.

Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof. (Matthew 13:32, King James Version)

Notice the phrase the least of all seeds.

He does not say a small seed. He does not say one of the smaller ones. He says the least of all seeds, which is the bottom of the scale, and He chooses it deliberately, because the whole point of the parable would collapse if He had picked something respectable.

And then look at where it ends. The greatest among herbs, a tree, birds lodging in the branches. The distance between the two ends of that sentence is the entire teaching.

You have a growing that is not yours to force, and eleven years of holding a rank have never once got one page read. His Spirit is present here, which is why the sower in Matthew 13:32 is nowhere at all in the growing part.

Now here is the part your hierarchy cannot survive.

The seed is not on its way to becoming valuable. It is already the kingdom. Jesus does not say the tree is like the kingdom and the seed is a stage on the way there. He says the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, present tense, at the smallest possible point in the process.

You are holding a small thing that is already the whole thing, and ten pages has never once been a lesser grade of reading. Matthew 13:32 names the least of all seeds on purpose and calls the kingdom that, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a man who has read nothing for eleven years.

There is one more piece in it and it is about who does the growing.

Nothing in the parable has the sower straining. He puts it in the ground and it grows, and the growing is not attributed to his technique or his commitment. The size at the start and the size at the end are both facts about the seed and the ground, not about the man.

You have a small thing that grows without being forced, and the size of what you start has never once predicted what it comes to. It is written which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and the sower is nowhere in the growing part, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The hierarchy came from somewhere and it is not from Him

Here is the mechanism, and it is a matter of inherited taste rather than of will.

The hierarchy of reading is a class signal, and it got into you young.

Long reading, difficult reading, reading with a shut door: those read as serious. Short reading reads as dabbling. Somewhere in adolescence that got absorbed, probably from somebody you admired, and it has been running unexamined for thirty years.

And a hierarchy has one job, which is to tell you where you rank. So every time reading comes up, the ranking runs first, and ten pages puts you near the bottom of a scale you did not build, and nobody voluntarily takes a position near the bottom of a scale.

That is why nothing happens. It is not the pages. It is the rank.

You are protecting a position on a scale nobody imposed but you, and eleven years of nothing has never once put you higher on it. Matthew 13:32 puts the kingdom at the least of all seeds and never once ranks the seed under the tree, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who would rather read nothing than read a little.

And there is a second thing, and it is the cost.

The hierarchy has an all-or-nothing structure, which means it can only ever be satisfied by the two hour version. And the two hour version is not available in your life, and has not been for eleven years, and the hierarchy has no category for a man in that position except failure.

So it produces nothing but nothing, forever, and calls that dignity.

You have permission to take a position the hierarchy despises, and ten pages a night has never once been the same thing as settling for less. The written word puts the kingdom of heaven at the smallest point on the scale and dares anybody to call it small, and His Spirit is the one who takes an inherited ranking off a man.

Ten pages, and not a compromise

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the part that has to be obeyed.

Read ten pages tonight and stop at ten, and do not call it a compromise when you put it down.

Ten pages. Then stopped, on purpose, whether or not you could have carried on.

And the naming matters. When the book goes down, the sentence in your head is going to be something like well, that was better than nothing. Refuse that sentence. It is the hierarchy taking its cut.

You are holding the whole thing at its smallest, and ten pages have never once been the lower rung of anything. The Holy Spirit is the one with you in that chair, and Matthew 13:32 calls the kingdom of heaven the least of all seeds at the point where it is smallest.

Here is why the naming is part of the assignment.

An action that gets filed as a compromise does not repeat. Nobody builds anything out of a thing they have privately labeled second best, and so the ten pages would happen twice and then stop, and the eleven years would resume with one more piece of evidence attached.

Ten pages named as reading is repeatable. Ten pages named as a compromise is a defeat with a bookmark in it.

You are able to read ten pages and refuse to grade them, and a small unit has never once needed an apology attached to it. Matthew 13:32 says which indeed is the least of all seeds, but when it is grown it is the greatest among herbs, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man closing a book at ten pages without ranking himself.

The word compromise is going to arrive anyway. Notice it, do not agree with it, and go to bed.

You have the kingdom's own image on your side tonight, and the least of all seeds has never once been the same thing as the least of all things. It is written and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof, and the seed is called the kingdom at the point where it is smallest, and the Spirit of God is calling this that.