The Book I Was Eight For

Your name is in pencil on the first page in handwriting you can barely recognize as yours.

You were eight. Somebody made you write your name in it, the way people did, and the letters are enormous and one of them is backwards. And you have read it four times since you were thirty five, which is a fact you have not mentioned to anybody.

Because there is a question attached and you have never settled it. Whether a man of forty one reading a book written for eight year olds is doing something charming or something slightly off.

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 the question, because Christ says something to grown men about receiving things as a child and He does not mean it as a criticism.

Receive it as a little child

There is an instruction in Mark 10 given to adults, in a room where adults were the ones being corrected, and the standard held up is a child.

Verily I say unto you, Whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall not enter therein. (Mark 10:15, King James Version)

Read who is being addressed.

Grown men. The disciples, who had just been sending children away, are the ones being told this, and the thing they are told to imitate is the posture of the children they were turning back.

And notice that it is not optional. Whosoever shall not receive it as a little child shall not enter. That is put as strongly as anything in that chapter, and the model held up for grown adults is an eight year old with their hands out.

You are being pointed at a child's posture as the standard, and reading a book you were eight for has never once been a thing beneath a grown man. Mark 10:15 holds up the posture of a little child as the required one for adults and states it as strongly as it can be stated, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a name in pencil on a first page.

There is one word in it doing the work and it is receive.

Receive. Not achieve, not understand, not master. The quality of a child that is being held up is the taking of a thing without earning it and without assessing whether they are entitled to it. That is what a child does with a gift and it is exactly what an adult finds difficult.

You have receiving held up as the thing to imitate, and taking a good thing without checking your entitlement has never once been immaturity. It is written whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, the word is receive and the model is a child's open hands, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The question is about being seen and not about the book

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being direct about.

The question is not whether the book is good. It is good, four adult readings say so, and there is no confusion anywhere about why.

The question is what somebody would think if they walked in. And that is a completely different question, and it is the only one that has been stopping you mentioning it, and it has been running for six years.

So the discomfort is not about the reading. It is about the imagined observer, and the imagined observer is not in the room, and has never been in the room, and is composed entirely of a general sense that grown men read grown up things.

You are answering to an observer who is not in the room, and four readings at forty one have never once been a thing to settle with anybody. Mark 10:15 puts a child's posture in front of adults as the standard, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who has not mentioned a book in six years.

And there is a second layer, and it is what the book is actually doing.

Nobody is reading it in order to be eight. That is the thing the imagined observer gets wrong. It gets read because a book written for an eight year old had to be built out of the plainest available materials, and plainness is a craft, and a good one of those is a cleaner piece of work than most books written for adults.

That is not regression. That is taste.

You have taste and not regression, and a book built plainly has never once been a lesser book than one built ornately. The written word holds up the receiving posture of a child as the requirement for grown men, and His Spirit is the one who takes an imagined observer out of a front room.

Ten pages of the one you already know

So here is the assignment, and it includes one extra thing.

Read ten pages of a book you already know.

That one. The eight year old one with your name in pencil in the front of it. Not something adjacent and respectable, and not it framed as reading it to a child.

Ten pages, on your own, as a man of forty one, because it is good.

And then mention it to one person this week. Not a justification. Just the fact: I read that again, the one I had when I was eight, and it holds up.

Here is why the mentioning.

Six years of not saying it is what built the question. A thing never spoken about cannot be corrected by anybody, so it just sits there accumulating a small doubt. One sentence to one person retires the whole thing, because the reaction will not be what you have been braced for.

You are able to read it as a grown man and say so, and one sentence said to one person has never once been the risk it looks like. Mark 10:15 says whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man reading his own childhood book on the floor by a low shelf.

And if there are children in the house, do not read it to them tonight. That version has a cover story built into it, and the cover story is the thing being retired.

You have a standard held up by Christ that points at a child, and receiving something plainly has never once been the mark of a man who has not grown up. It is written he shall not enter therein, the requirement is stated at full strength and the model for adults is a child with open hands, and the Spirit of God is saying it in that front room today.