The Same Book Four Times

Four times through Luke in two years, and he has never told anybody.

It was not a plan. The first time was ordinary. The second time he told himself he had not really taken it in. The third time he did not decide anything at all: he finished something else and he was back at chapter one on a Tuesday and he noticed about a week in.

The fourth time he knew what he was doing and did it anyway.

Meanwhile the man he sits next to on a Sunday is doing the whole thing in a year for the third year running, and finished Chronicles in February, and is somewhere in the prophets now.

And two people in the Wednesday group are doing a course.

He has read one gospel four times. He could tell you where things are in it without looking. He knows which parable comes after which, and he has an opinion about the order of two of them, and there is a sentence in chapter fifteen that he cannot get past and has not been able to for about eight months.

And when anybody asks what he is reading, he says, quickly and lightly: oh, I am just going back over Luke again.

Just. Again. Two words doing an apology.

Thou shalt meditate therein day and night

Sit down at the table with it open a minute, because the first thing God says to Joshua about the book is not about covering it.

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.Joshua 1:8

Shall not depart out of thy mouth. Meditate therein day and night.

That is a staying instruction. It is about a thing that does not leave, that is turned over and over in the same mouth, day and night, which is not a description of coverage. Nobody covers ground day and night. You return to ground day and night.

And the word behind meditate is a muttering word, the noise of a man saying the same sentence to himself under his breath while he does something else, which is a fairly exact description of a man who cannot get past chapter fifteen.

Hear this at your own table. You are not behind anybody, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture tells Joshua to stay in it rather than to get through it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept putting you back at chapter one without you deciding anything.

Now let me name what the word just is doing, because you say it quickly and lightly and it is the only dishonest thing in this whole article.

It is a pre emptive apology for not being on a schedule.

There is nothing wrong with a reading plan and I am not going to spend a paragraph being clever about the man next to you. He is reading the whole Bible in a year for the third time and that is a good and serious thing and it has fed him and I would not take one page of it off him.

But you have concluded that his way is the standard and yours is a shortfall, and nobody told you that, and it is not in the verse.

Hear this too, and let it land on the open page. You are not lazy or narrow, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts the instruction on staying and muttering and not departing, and the Spirit of God has never once graded a person on ground covered.

And the sentence in chapter fifteen, which is the actual evidence in this article.

Eight months. It will not let you go and you have not been able to finish with it. That is not a stall. That is exactly what the verse describes happening to a man, and it is the thing a schedule would have moved you off in about four days. It is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has held you at that sentence for eight months.