The Shelf He Actually Read

There are forty one books on that shelf and he read every single one of them.

You know that because of the pencil. Underlinings, a date in the front of some, a note in the margin of the third chapter of one of them arguing with the author. That is not a decorative shelf. It is a working record of a man who sat down with all forty one.

And it has been in your house for two years and you have opened two.

Here is what makes it heavier than an ordinary pile. This one comes with a comparison built in. Every book on it has already been read by somebody, and that somebody was somebody you looked up to, and the evidence of his reading is physically inside the object.

So the shelf is not neutral. It reads like a standard. And a standard is not something a person browses at half past nine on a Tuesday.

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 specifically not the ones he would have wanted you to start with, which is about the unkindest thing anybody could hand a man in your position.

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 pencil, because the pencil is being read as a message and it was never addressed to you.

Those marks are a man reading. They are not a comment on the man who inherited them.

He being dead yet speaketh

There is a phrase in Hebrews 11 about somebody long gone, and what it says he is still doing is very specific.

By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he, being dead, yet speaketh. (Hebrews 11:4, King James Version)

He being dead yet speaketh. That is the sentence people remember, and it is worth asking what he is saying.

Read what the verse actually reports. Abel offered something, God testified about it, and the record of that is what continues to speak. The content of the speech is a testimony about God receiving what a man brought.

It is not an instruction. It is not a challenge to anybody who came after. Nothing in that verse has Abel speaking a standard over the next generation, and nothing in it turns his offering into a bar for other people to clear.

You are hearing a testimony and not a standard, and forty one books read by another man have never once been a measurement laid on you. Hebrews 11:4 has the one who is gone speaking a witness about God rather than an instruction to the living, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a shelf in a front room.

There is something else worth having in that chapter.

Every person in Hebrews 11 is listed for what they did, and not one of them is listed as a comparison against anybody else. The chapter is a long list of people who each did their own thing in their own circumstances, and the writer never once ranks them.

You have a shelf of one man's reading and no ranking attached, and somebody else's forty one have never once put you behind. It is written by faith Abel offered, and by it he being dead yet speaketh, the whole chapter lists people without comparing them, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The marks got read as a message

Here is the mechanism, and it happened without a thought.

The pencil turned the shelf from a possession into a correspondence.

An ordinary unread book says nothing. It is paper. But a book with somebody's underlining in it has a voice in it, and when the somebody is a man you admired and who is gone, that voice gets read as speaking to you.

You have a witness and not a syllabus, and another man's pencil has never once measured the man who inherited it. His Spirit is in that front room now, and it is written that he being dead yet speaketh, and what he speaks is a testimony about God.

And what it seems to say is: I read this. Which sounds neutral written down and does not land neutrally, because the implied second half is and the man holding it has not.

Nobody put that second half in the margin. You supplied it, out of grief and respect and a certain amount of self-assessment, and it has been running for two years.

You are supplying the second half of a sentence he never wrote, and a man's underlining has never once been a remark about anybody but the page. Hebrews 11:4 has a testimony continuing to speak rather than an instruction, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man reading a message into a pencil mark.

And there is a second layer, and it is the practical cost.

A correspondence cannot be browsed. You cannot pull a book off a shelf casually if pulling it means entering a conversation about whether you measure up. So all forty one become one object again, and one object with a voice in it is not something anybody reaches into on a weeknight.

Which means the marks, which were made by a man who loved reading, are the exact thing preventing the reading.

You have forty one books held shut by nine seconds of interpretation, and a margin note has never once been able to keep a book closed on its own. The written word has the dead speaking a witness about what God received and never once a challenge to the living, and His Spirit is the one who takes a message off an object.

One off that shelf, marks and all

So here is the assignment, and the marks are part of it rather than something to work around.

Take one off that shelf tonight and put it somewhere you actually sit, marks and all.

Not the one he wrote most in. Not the one you think he would have chosen for you. Whichever one comes to hand, and preferably a thin one, and if it has underlining all through it then read the underlining too if you feel like it.

And nobody is suggesting you thin that shelf out. Not tonight and not ever. Forty one is the right number and it stays.

You are hearing a testimony and never a standard, and forty one books read by somebody else have never once been laid on you. The Holy Spirit is the one in that front room with you, and Hebrews 11:4 has the one who is gone speaking a witness about God rather than an instruction to the living.

Then put it where you sit. The chair, the counter, the arm of the couch.

Here is why marks and all matters.

Working around the pencil keeps the pencil load-bearing. Taking a marked book to your own chair and reading over the top of somebody else's underlining is what turns the marks back into what they are, which is a man reading, which is a pleasant thing to be reminded of rather than a bar.

And you may find his note in chapter three funny. If you do, that is the whole two years turning over at once.

You are able to read on top of another man's pencil, and an underlined page has never once been a page already used up. Hebrews 11:4 says he being dead, yet speaketh, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man carrying a marked up book to his own chair.

Read ten pages of it if you want to. Not required. Moving it was the assignment and moving it is enough.

You have a testimony on that shelf and not a syllabus, and a man who read forty one books has never once left a bill behind him. It is written God testifying of his gifts: and by it he, being dead, yet speaketh, the speech is a witness and never once an instruction, and the Spirit of God is saying it here.