Twenty Minutes Before Anybody Is Up

You read for twenty minutes this morning at quarter to five and you told somebody at ten o'clock that you do not read much.

Both of those happened. Neither was a lie in your own mind, because the thing at quarter to five does not file under reading. It files under being up early, under the kettle and the quiet and the dog wanting out, and the book is part of the furniture of that hour rather than an activity you would report.

And so the answer to do you read comes out as not really, and it has come out that way for two years, and in those two years you have read a great deal.

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 one more thing to be 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.

What I want to look at is the not counting, because I think something is being quietly stolen from you by a habit of speech.

It counted. Every morning of it counted. Nobody was there to see it, and that is the only thing wrong.

Rising up a great while before day

There is a detail in Mark 1 that the Gospel keeps for a reason, and the reason is not the hour.

And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed. (Mark 1:35, King James Version)

Read what surrounds it. The night before, the whole town was at the door. Sick people, crowds, a house that could not hold them. It is the busiest night in the chapter.

And then before light He gets up and goes out and does something nobody sees.

Notice that Mark writes it down. That is the part worth stopping on. The thing done in the dark with no witnesses is in the record, described in detail, with the hour specified, which means somebody thought an unseen hour was worth reporting.

You are doing a thing that goes on the record, and an hour nobody saw has never once counted for less than one they did. Mark 1:35 puts an unwitnessed hour into the Gospel with the time of day specified, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a kitchen at quarter to five.

There is something else in it, and it is about scale.

A solitary place. Not a platform, not the crowd at the door, not the visible ministry that had the whole town in it. Something small and private, and the passage treats it as the source of the rest rather than as a lesser version of it.

You have a small unseen hour that feeds the visible ones, and privacy has never once made a thing smaller than it was. It is written that He rose a great while before day and departed into a solitary place, the Gospel records the hour and the place and the fact that nobody was there, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

Reading you do not report is reading

Here is the mechanism, and it is a mechanism of language rather than of will.

The word reading, in your mouth, means something you could be asked about.

That is the whole of it. Reading is a thing that happens in a chair in the evening, that a person would mention, that somebody might ask a question about later. And at quarter to five in a kitchen with a dog waiting there is nobody to mention it to, so the word never gets attached to it.

And once the word is not attached, the thing does not accumulate. Two years of twenty minutes is a long shelf of books, and you could not tell somebody what is on it, because it never got filed as reading anywhere in your head.

That is not modesty and it is not a character issue. It is a bookkeeping error, and it has cost you two years of knowing what you are.

You are a man with a shelf he never wrote down, and two years of unreported mornings have never once been two years of not reading. Mark 1:35 records the unseen hour and specifies it rather than skipping it, and the Holy Spirit is present with somebody who has been leaving his own mornings out of the account.

And there is a second cost, and this one is practical.

Because it does not count, it does not get protected. An hour that is not filed under anything gets taken by the first thing that wants it: an early call, a job that starts sooner, a week where the alarm moves. And nothing objects, because there was nothing on the books to object on behalf of.

You have something worth defending on the calendar, and an hour that goes unnamed has never once been an hour that did not matter. The written word puts a man leaving a house full of need to go to a solitary place before light, and His Spirit is the one who names a thing so it can be kept.

Twenty minutes, count the pages, stop at ten

So here is the assignment, and the counting is what does the work.

Read your twenty minutes tomorrow before anybody is up, count the pages, and stop when you reach ten.

The same hour. The same kettle. Nothing about the morning changes except two things, and both are small.

Count the pages. Actually count them, and know the number when you put it down.

And stop at ten even if the twenty minutes are not used up.

You have an hour that went into the record, and a morning nobody witnessed has never once counted for less than one they did. His Spirit is in that kitchen at quarter to five, and it is written that He rose up a great while before day and departed into a solitary place.

Here is why the counting matters more than it sounds like.

A number is what makes a thing exist in the account. Ten pages is a fact you can hold, and two hundred pages a month is a fact you can say out loud when somebody asks whether you read. Twenty minutes of being up early is not a fact anybody can do anything with.

And stopping at ten, because ten is repeatable on the bad mornings. Twenty minutes is not, and a week of early calls will take it, and then the two years will look like they ended when in fact only the twenty minutes did.

You are able to count ten pages and know the number, and a counted page has never once been worth less than an uncounted one. Mark 1:35 has the Gospel record an hour with nobody in it and give the time it happened, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man counting pages before light.

You may feel that counting takes something out of it. It does not take the hour, it only names it, and an hour with a name is an hour that survives a hard week.

You have two years of mornings that go on the record now, and an unwitnessed hour has never once needed a witness to be real. It is written that He rose up a great while before day and went out into a solitary place, the record keeps the detail nobody was there for, and the Spirit of God is keeping this one.