The Book Left Face Down

The book has been face down on the arm of the chair since March, open at page forty one, and there is dust on the top edge now, in a line, the way dust settles on a thing that has stopped being touched.

He was a reader. That is not a small word in his house. His father was a reader, and his father's father was a man with a shelf of Russians he had bought one at a time. There was always something going in this chair: something in the evening, something else at the kitchen table, a third thing in the truck for the long waits. He read the way other men fish.

And in March he stopped.

Nobody made him. His hands are fine. His eyes are fine. He can hold a paperback for as long as he likes and it costs him nothing, and if you asked him why the book is face down he would say he has been busy, and that is not true and he knows it is not true and he is a little surprised, each time he says it, at how easily it comes out.

Here is the real reason and he has never said it to a living soul.

To read a book, you have to want to know what happens next. That is the whole engine of the thing. And somewhere in the spring he made a decision, quietly, without words, the way a man makes the decisions that actually run his life. Wanting to know what happens next had become too expensive. He had spent it too many times: on a scan, on a letter, on a call that was going to change everything and did not, on a week when they said they would ring and then did not ring until the Monday. Every time he wanted to know what happened next, he paid for it. And at some point his hands went to his pockets and there was nothing left in them, and so he stopped reaching.

So now he watches things instead. Whatever is on. Things he has seen. Things with no next.

And here is the part I actually want you to see. Every single instrument that has been pointed at him this year has been pointed at his body. Every appointment, every form, every waiting room, every question he has been asked has been about the same handful of inches. Not one of them has looked at the fact that a man who has read his whole life put a book face down in March and has not picked it up since.

That is you, perhaps, in your own chair. There is your own version of the book. The friend you have stopped calling back. The recipe box you have not opened. The song you skip now. And every test you have had this year has looked at the thing everybody is worried about, and nothing has looked at what all of this has been quietly doing to the inside of you.

The two places He lives

There is a verse in Isaiah with a strange piece of architecture in it, and once you see the shape you cannot unsee it.

For thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy; I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the contrite.Isaiah 57:15

Read that again slowly. He names two addresses in one breath. The high and holy place, which is where you would expect a God described as high and lofty to be. And, in the same sentence, with the same verb, no change of tone, no descending, no stooping described: with the crushed.

He does not say He visits them. He does not say He looks in on them from the high place, or thinks of them kindly from a distance. He says He dwells there. Both are His residence. The high and holy place is not more His home than the inside of a person who has been flattened.

And notice the reason He gives, because He gives one, twice. To revive. That is not a word for something that was never alive. You do not revive a stone. You revive a thing that had life in it and lost it, and the whole point of the word is that what is coming back is what was there before.

You are one of the two places He lives, and that is written down in Isaiah 57:15 and not something anybody made up to comfort you. It is the Holy Spirit who takes that sentence off a page and puts it in an armchair in March, and He came into the room to revive and not to inspect.

Not a consolation prize

Now let me say what this is not, because somebody has probably already handed it to you badly.

If anyone has offered you inner healing as the runner-up ribbon, as the thing you get instead of the thing you asked for, put that down. That is not what Isaiah says and it is not what I am saying. I am not swapping your body for your soul and calling it even. The subject you brought here is still the subject. Nothing on this page changes it into something easier to answer.

What I am telling you is that a second thing got damaged this year, and almost nobody has mentioned it, and God is not ignoring it. This is in addition. Not instead. The God who dwells with the crushed is the same God who heals bodies, and He is not running a swap.

So both halves, said in one breath, because a page carrying this name would be a liar if it dropped either. God heals. I will not soften that: He heals, He heals bodies, it is His character and not a rumor, and Scripture never apologizes for it. And I do not promise you the result. I cannot and I will not. We say what He has already said and He sends the current, and anyone claiming to know what happens next in your body is speaking beyond what they were given. Keep your appointments and keep the people caring for you; the God who hears you is not in competition with them.

And nothing about the last year happened because of a shortfall in you. Nobody in this room is short of enough faith, and there is no unremembered failure being held against you. That sentence is not in the book and it is not true, and it has done more harm in quiet houses than almost anything else people say.

You have a spirit He came specifically to revive, and it is already His work and not a project He is waiting for you to start. Isaiah 57:15 says it twice in one verse, and it is His Spirit who is the one doing the reviving, and never a person's ability to talk themselves back into wanting something.

One more thing, and I mean it. If this year has taken you somewhere darker than tired, if you have caught yourself thinking the people around you would have a lighter time of it without you, tell one living human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit with you tonight. A page cannot do that part. You deserve a person in the room, and there is not one thing shameful in this.