She Could Not Read It. I Can.

His grandmother kept it wrapped in a piece of cloth in the drawer under the sewing things, and she took it out most Sundays and put it on the table and put her hand on it.

She could not read a word of it.

She had four years of school and then she had work, and she could sign her name and read a bus timetable and prices in a shop, and that was the whole of it, and she was not ashamed of that and never pretended otherwise.

So what she did instead was ask. She asked the woman across the yard who had more schooling. She asked her son when he came. She asked Rafa himself, from about the age of nine, and he remembers this with an accuracy that surprises him, because she would put the book in front of him and say read me a bit and he would read out whatever was in front of him, badly, and she would sit with her hands in her lap and her eyes closed.

Sometimes she would stop him and ask him to read a line again. Sometimes she would laugh. Once she cried and he did not know why and she said never mind, keep going.

Rafa is thirty-four and has two degrees.

The book is on a shelf in his flat, still in the cloth, and he has not read a page of it in about six years.

He is not far from God. That is what makes this hard to look at. He goes on Sundays. He prays in the car. He would tell you honestly and simply that he believes it. He just does not open it, and if you asked him why he would give you three quite reasonable answers about time and tiredness and how he never knows where to start.

But the real one came to him in the summer, standing in the kitchen with the cloth in his hand, and it is this.

She wanted it and could not have it.

He can have it any morning he likes, in his own language, in a good clear print, for free, and he has been leaving it shut for six years.

And the thing that arrives with that is not guilt exactly. It is a kind of vertigo. Because a woman with four years of school arranged her entire Sunday around getting a boy to read her half a page, and her grandson, who can read anything, has quietly decided that opening it is a project he has not got round to.

And you may have your own version of that. Somebody in your line wanted this and could not get at it. And it is in your hand now, in your own tongue, and it has been shut a while.

They read it out, and made it plain, so the people understood

Let me take something off you first, because you have been carrying it and it was never yours to carry.

You are not too late and you are not disqualified by six years of a shut book. You never were. Scripture describes itself being read out to whole crowds of ordinary people until they understood it, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your schedule or your schooling, who makes it plain in you. Put that down here in the kitchen. It is heavy and it has kept you standing at your own shelf.

Now hear one of the oldest scenes in the whole story, because it is a scene about exactly this.

A city has been in ruins. The people come back. And they stand in a square from early morning until midday, which is a very long time to stand, while the book is read out to them.

They read from the Book of the Law of God, making it clear and giving the meaning so that the people understood what was being read.Nehemiah 8:8

Look at who is in that square. Not scholars. Everybody. Men, women, and everyone able to understand. Standing in the open. Weeping at some points, and later told to go home and eat good food and send some to those who have none, because the day is holy.

And look at what the readers are doing. Making it clear. Giving the meaning. So the people understood.

That is the whole aim, stated plainly, thousands of years ago: that ordinary people, standing in a square, would understand what was being read.

You have that. Right now, on a shelf, in a cloth, in a language you read fluently. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who gives the understanding, and He has never once made the understanding conditional on schooling.

Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch on this side of the road too.

The ones who read out in that square were doing real work, and the long labor of the people who translate and teach is not something to shrug at. It cost people their lives to get the words into ordinary tongues, and the ones who explain it well to you on a Sunday are a gift. Nothing here is against any of that, and a man who reads only alone and will hear nobody ends up narrow, sure of himself, and hard to help.

Keep your teachers.

The point is that the square was full of people who could not have taught a word of it, and the whole event was arranged so that they would understand. You are in the square. You were never meant to be waiting outside it for a qualification, because the word was read out for people exactly like you and His Spirit is the one who gives the understanding.

Here is the tender part, and I say it gently. What is stopping you is not time.

It is that opening it feels like a project you would have to be good at, and your grandmother's Sundays make it feel weightier still, and so it stays wrapped. Scripture says they made it clear so the people understood, and the same Spirit who was over that square is in your kitchen, and He is not waiting for you to become the kind of man who reads properly.

And the honest half, because it belongs here. She never once asked you to be good at it. She asked you to read her a bit.