Two Hundred Pages In And Not Enjoying It

You have read the same page three evenings running and it is not because the page is difficult.

Your eyes go over it and nothing goes in. Then you notice you have no idea what happened, so you go back to the top, and exactly the same thing happens all the way down again.

Third night. And you know what that means and you have not said it to yourself in actual words yet.

You are not enjoying this book. You have been two hundred pages in since about the middle of August.

And somebody you respect recommended it, which is the actual reason you cannot stop, and in the last six weeks you have described yourself twice as somebody who has not got much time for reading. Which is not true. There is time. It is going into the same page.

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 at all.

What I want to look at is the permission, because it is available and nobody has ever handed it to you plainly.

You are allowed to close it. Tonight, with no conditions attached and nothing to get through first.

The world itself could not contain the books

There is a sentence at the very end of John's Gospel that does something that should be strange and somehow never gets noticed.

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written. Amen. (John 21:25, King James Version)

Read the last line of the whole Gospel again.

John is telling us, in his closing sentence, that he left things out. Not that he ran short of paper. That the material is beyond containing, and what is in your hands is a selection.

And then look at the last word. Amen.

There is no anxiety anywhere in that sentence. He does not apologize for the incompleteness. He does not promise a second volume, or tell anybody where to find the rest, or express regret about it. He states that there is more, and then he closes the book, and he writes Amen.

You are looking at a man closing a book while there is plainly more, and stopping has never once been the same thing as failing to finish. John 21:25 has the writer name the excess and then close anyway with no distress in the sentence at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a chair in August.

There is something else in it and it settles the whole question.

If completion were the standard, that sentence could not stand where it stands. The idea that a thing must be finished in order to have counted is not a principle anybody is going to find in the last verse of that Gospel.

You have a closing that was chosen and not achieved, and an unfinished book has never once been an uncounted one. It is written I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written, and the word after that is Amen, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The recommendation is the thing holding it open

Here is the mechanism, and it is not about the book at all.

A man you respect handed you that book, and the handing over made it something other than a book.

Think about what actually happened. He said something warm about it, he thought of you when he said it, and you took it as a small piece of regard. Which it was. That is a good thing and it is not the problem.

The problem is what it did to the closing. Putting the book down would now be, in some very quiet corner of your head, a response to him rather than to the book. And no man wants to hand a small no back to somebody he respects.

So the book stays open. Not for the story. To avoid a sentence you would never actually have to say to anybody.

You are protecting a man's feelings from a conversation that will never happen, and a recommendation has never once been a debt you took on. John 21:25 closes a book with more plainly left over and calls it finished, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man reading the same page for the third night.

And there is a second cost, and it is the one that has taken six weeks.

That book is sitting in the chair that reading sits in. One book at a time is how you have always read, and while this one is open nothing else is allowed into the room, so it is not one book you have lost since August. It is all of them.

You have a chair that is about to come free, and one open book has never once been worth six weeks of every other book. The written word has John state the excess and close anyway without one word of apology, and His Spirit is the one who hands a man back the room.

Put it down, and start another one

So here is the assignment, and there is no caveat attached to any part of it.

Put down the book that is not working tonight and start another one before you sleep.

Close it. Not at the chapter break. Not after fifty more pages to be sure. Where it sits, tonight, at page two hundred and whatever it is.

And nobody here is going to tell you to give it another go, or that it picks up, or that a man who recommended it would be disappointed. He would not. He recommended a book, which is a friendly act, and friendly acts do not come with terms.

You have permission with nothing attached to it, and two hundred pages already read have never once obliged a man to the rest. His Spirit is in that chair now, and it is written that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written, and the next word is Amen.

Then start something else. Tonight, before you sleep, ten pages of it.

Here is why the second half is not optional.

Closing on its own leaves the evening ending on a stop, and a stop is what six weeks of this has trained you to read as a failure. Something else opened in the same twenty minutes makes it a swap, and the chair is occupied again by the time you go to bed.

You are able to close a book a friend recommended and keep the friend, and one shut cover has never once been a message to anybody. John 21:25 says even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man closing something at page two hundred in his own chair.

If he asks in three months, tell him the truth. It did not land for you. That is a whole sentence and it needs nothing after it.

You have permission with no conditions on it, and a book put down at two hundred pages has never once been the same thing as a man who gave up. It is written and there are also many other things which Jesus did, the writer names the excess and writes Amen in the same breath, and the Spirit of God is saying it over a chair tonight.