The Page Is Harder To Hand Over Than Anything

You have given that person a great many things over the years.

Handed over, no trouble, no particular feeling about it. A thing goes from your hands to theirs and there is a second of warmth and the afternoon carries on.

And then there is this page.

You wrote it about three weeks ago, in one go, mostly at a kitchen counter, and it is the truest thing you have ever put down about that person. You have read it back twice and both times something happened in your chest.

And you cannot hand it over.

You have carried it in a jacket. You have taken it out and put it on a table and put it back in. It has been in a drawer for nine days.

And you have been telling yourself it needs work, and it does not need work, and you know that too.

There is a line in Habakkuk about writing something down, and it says what the writing is actually for.

That he may run that readeth it

Here it is.

And the LORD answered me, and said, Write the vision, and make it plain upon tables, that he may run that readeth it. (Habakkuk 2:2, King James Version)

Three instructions in a row and the third one is the one that undoes you.

Write it. Make it plain. And then: that he may run that readeth it.

There is a reader in that sentence. The writing has a destination and the destination is a person, and the whole point of the plainness is so that somebody can pick it up and move.

You have written something with a reader built into the purpose of it, and Habakkuk 2:2 puts the running of the one who reads it in the same breath as the writing. The Holy Spirit is the one who attached a reader to the instruction, and He attached it as the reason rather than as an afterthought.

Now make it plain upon tables, which is worth slowing down on.

Tables there means tablets. Something set out in the open where it can be seen. Not filed, not kept, not written and retained by the writer.

A written thing that stays with the person who wrote it has not finished being written in the sense that verse means.

You have a half finished act in a drawer, and it is written that the making plain is upon tables rather than in a keeping. The Spirit of God is the one who defined writing that way, and He defined it as something that ends up in front of somebody else.

And here is the hard clause. That he may run.

Something happens in the reader. They move. The writing is for the sake of a change in a person who is not the writer, and there is no version of that available while the page is in a jacket.

You have been holding the part where it does something, and the written word puts the whole purpose in the one who reads rather than in the one who wrote. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the moving in a reader, and He has never once done it through an unread page.

Why a page is harder

Now let me say why this one is different, because it is not shyness and it is not modesty.

An object can be misread and the object takes it. If she does not like a thing, the thing was wrong. There is a piece of matter standing between two people and it absorbs whatever happens.

A page has nothing in it but you. There is no object to take the weight. If it lands badly, nothing failed except the man who wrote it.

You are handing over something with no protection built into it, and it is written that the writing is made plain for a reader rather than for the writer's comfort. The Spirit of God is the one who names that honestly, and He does not pretend it is a small thing.

And there is a second reason, and it is the one that keeps the drawer shut.

You said the true thing. Not the polite version, the true one. That is why it took one sitting and that is why something happened in your chest reading it back.

And the true thing about somebody is always more exposing to the person who noticed it than to the person it is about.

You have been exposed by your own noticing, and His word asks for plainness rather than for safety. The Holy Spirit is the one who moved a man to write plainly in the first place, and He did not do it so it could sit in a drawer for nine days.

And one plain thing about what happens on her side.

Almost nobody gets one of these. Most people go their whole lives without one page from one person saying the true thing plainly. She has almost certainly never had one.

You are holding something she has never once been given by anybody, and it is written that the plainness is so that the one who reads it can run. The Spirit of God is the one who knows how rare that page is, and it is rarer than anything you have ever handed over.

Hand over the page

So here is what to do, and the details are the only reason it is possible.

Fold it. Hand it to her folded, so that it is obviously not to be read in front of you.

That one move takes about ninety per cent of the difficulty out of it, and it is not a dodge. It is how anybody hands over something that needs to be read alone.

You are able to hand it over folded, and Habakkuk 2:2 asks for it to be made plain for a reader rather than read aloud to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who arranges a reading that happens somewhere else, and somewhere else is where this one belongs.

And say one sentence and then leave the subject.

I wrote this for you. Read it on your own. That is the whole of it and it is ten words.

Then talk about something else immediately. Do not hover. Do not explain what is in it. Do not give her a summary of the page while she is holding the page.

You have ten words and then a different subject, and it is written that the plainness is put on tables rather than introduced. The Spirit of God is the one who carries a folded page across a porch, and it does not need one word of help.

And then go home and let it be read without you.

She will read it that evening or she will read it in three weeks. She may say something about it and she may never mention it once, and some people never mention the thing that mattered most to them.

The absence of a response is not the absence of an effect, and the verse says the running happens in the reader rather than in the room.

You are not waiting to find out whether it worked, and Scripture puts the movement in the one who reads rather than in anything said back. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with her while she reads it, and He is there whether or not you ever hear about it.