She Finished The Plan In November

She finished it eleven days early, which she noticed and was slightly pleased about and then felt odd about being pleased.

Four times through now. The first one took fourteen months because she was new to it and Leviticus nearly ended her. The second was cleaner. The third she did with a different arrangement, the one that puts a bit of each part together, which she liked.

The fourth finished on a Tuesday in November at about half past six in the morning.

She read the last chapter. She closed the book. She sat there.

And there was nothing.

Not sadness. Not disappointment exactly. Just a Tuesday morning, and a woman of sixty-one in a chair with a blanket, and the fact of having done a thing.

She made the tea.

And here is what she has not said to anybody in nine months, because she cannot think of a way to say it that does not sound like a complaint about the Bible, which she would rather die than make.

She was expecting to meet somebody.

Not a feeling. She is not a woman who chases feelings and she has never once judged a morning by one. But somewhere across four times through, some part of her had been keeping an account, and the account had a person at the end of it, and when she got there the room was empty.

And the strangest part is that she started the fifth one in January, out of habit, and she is in Numbers now, and it is fine.

Everything is fine. That is the whole trouble.

And you have finished something. A plan, or a course, or a run of years, and you got to the end of it and found a completed thing rather than a Person, and you have not been able to say so out loud.

They testify of Me

There is a sentence in John five where Jesus is speaking to the most diligent readers in the country, and He is not sneering at them and He is not telling them to read less.

You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.John 5:39-40

Read what He does not say.

He does not say the searching is worthless. He does not say the years of it were wasted, and He does not suggest they should have done something else with the time.

What He says is what the Scriptures are for. They bear witness about Him. That is their stated function in that sentence, and a witness points at somebody who is standing somewhere else in the room.

You have been reading a witness, and a witness has always been pointing at a Person who is present. It is written that they bear witness about me (John 5:39), and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a woman who has been through the whole of it four times and turns her head toward the One it has been about since Genesis.

Now the thing you have not said, and it is not a complaint about Scripture.

You were expecting to meet somebody.

That is not a wrong expectation. That is precisely the right one and it is the expectation the book itself creates, because the whole of it is a witness and a witness exists to produce a meeting.

The account you were keeping was not greedy. It was the correct account, and the reason it came out empty in November is not that you had asked for too much.

You were expecting exactly the right thing and there is nothing in that expectation to apologize for. Scripture says you will seek me and find me, when you seek me with all your heart (Jeremiah 29:13), and it is the Holy Spirit who produces the finding, which is not something a completed plan has ever been able to deliver on its own.

And what actually happened at half past six on that Tuesday.

You reached the end of a witness and found no meeting, and you closed the book and made the tea.

There is a reason for that and it is very simple and it is not about you. A plan finishes. A meeting does not have an end date, and the two things run on different logic, and a person who has spent four times through inside the first one will naturally expect the second to arrive as an event.

He does not arrive as an event. That is the whole of what November was showing you.

You are not waiting on an arrival, because the Person the witness points at is in the room while you read. It is written that where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them (Matthew 18:20), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a present fact in a front room with a blanket, at half past six, before anybody opens anything.

And Numbers, and the fact that it is fine.

Do not stop. Nobody here is telling a woman who has been through it four times to put the book down, and the fifth one is not a sign of anything wrong.

But you have been reading it as an achievement for a while now, and there is another way to read the same page, which is as a letter from somebody who is sitting there.

You have four times through in you and every page of it was pointing at a Person, including the ones in Leviticus. Scripture says the word of God is living and active (Hebrews 4:12), and it is His Spirit who makes it living, which is why a page read at half past six in an ordinary front room is never a solitary activity.