He counted, once, and wishes he had not.
Four times. The same page. And at the end of the fourth pass he could not have told you the subject of it, and he sat there for a moment with his hand flat on the paper.
He is sixty-seven. He was a schoolteacher for thirty-four years, which is the part that makes it unbearable.
And this is not really an article about his Bible reading, though that is where it shows up, and he knows it, and that is precisely why he has not told anybody.
Because there have been other things. The name of a road he has driven for twenty years. A conversation with his son that his son says happened and he cannot place at all. Standing in the utility room recently, twice in one week, without knowing what he came for.
He has not been to the doctor. He has drafted the sentence in his head about forty times, and it is a short sentence, and he cannot make himself say it because the moment it is said out loud it becomes a real thing with a name and a pathway and other people in it.
So he sits at half past six every morning and reads the same page four times, and the reading has become the place where he takes the measurement, and the measurement keeps coming back the same.
The day it was read to everybody
There is a scene in Nehemiah where the law of God is brought out and read to a whole population, and the detail that matters is what had to happen alongside it.
So they read in the book in the law of God distinctly, and gave the sense, and caused them to understand the reading.Nehemiah 8:8
Gave the sense. Caused them to understand.
Look at where the responsibility sits in that sentence. Somebody read it. Somebody carried the sense across. Somebody caused the understanding to happen in the hearers.
Not one part of that job belongs to the people listening. They stood there. The whole apparatus of getting it into them was operated by somebody else, because Hebrew was slipping out of common use and the crowd could not do it themselves.
That is the normal condition of God's people in that chapter. Unable to get at it unaided, and provided for.
You are being read to rather than examined, and the carrying of the sense has never been your job. That is not me finding a merciful reading for a frightening situation; Nehemiah 8:8 puts the giving of the sense on the ones doing the reading, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a day in a square and stands it beside a man with his hand flat on a page at half past six.
What the mornings have become
Now let me say the true thing about what is actually happening at that table, and I am going to be direct because I think you would prefer it.
Your Bible reading has stopped being your Bible reading. It has become a daily cognitive test, self-administered, in private, at half past six, by a frightened man who taught for thirty-four years and knows exactly what a failed comprehension looks like.
That is not a spiritual problem. It is not dryness and it is not distance from God, and if you had come to me saying you felt cold toward God I would have had to tell you that I do not think that is what this is.
You have been sitting an examination you did not know you had set, and God never once entered you for it. The written word has other people carrying the sense to a whole nation who could not carry it themselves, and the Holy Spirit is not assessing a man's retention over a coffee at half past six.
And now the other thing, and I will say it once and plainly because somebody has to and it should be somebody who is on your side.
Go and say the short sentence to a doctor.
Not because it is a spiritual duty and not because I know what it is. I do not, and it may well be a good deal less than you fear; men your age have thyroids and sleep problems and blood pressure and grief and medication interactions, and all of those do this. But you have been carrying a fear alone for months, and that is its own harm on top of whatever the actual answer turns out to be, and there is no version of this where finding out is worse than the drafting.
You are permitted to be frightened and to get it looked at, and neither of those is a failure of faith. Scripture never once treats a body's limits as a spiritual verdict, and the Holy Spirit is not the one who has been keeping a man from a waiting room.
So here is the hour, and it has two parts and I want both.
I am not going to promise you that the page will hold tomorrow. I do not know, and I am not going to tell you what is happening in your head, because I am not qualified and neither is anybody who has not examined you.
The first part is that you stop taking the measurement. Reading is not a test and you have quietly turned it into one, and a man cannot meet God in a room where he is being assessed every morning.
The second part is the doctor. Say the short sentence to somebody who can actually do something with it.
You are held by God at exactly the level of capacity you have this morning, right now, as you read this. That is what the word of God shows in a square where the sense was given to people who could not reach it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and takes a private examination off a frightened man.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these out loud where you are, sitting or standing, in whatever voice this morning has left you. The right to say them is not manufactured by feeling: Christ is in you, and what God has already put in writing about the sense being given to people who could not reach it is the ground under your feet, with the Holy Spirit carrying it rather than the steadiness of your voice. Then leave the outcome to Him, because what the doctor finds and what the years hold are His to handle and never mine to carry alone.
- Page I read four times, you are not the measure of me and you never were. The word of God has the sense given to a whole nation who could not get at it unaided, and not one part of that job belonged to the people standing there.
- Test I set myself every morning at half past six, you are canceled. In the name of Jesus I refuse you the last word, because the Holy Spirit has never once assessed a man's retention over a coffee, and I am taking the short sentence to a doctor.
- Lord, You give the sense and You cause the understanding, and You always have. I thank You, because Your word puts that work on the ones doing the reading, and Your Spirit has been carrying it across the table on every morning I could not hold a line of it.
Nehemiah 8:8
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.