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I do not open my Bible today.
The book stays on the desk, just behind my laptop, hidden in the shadow of the bright screen.
Do we ever recover the words we do not read? I wonder about this on mornings like this. The book sits where it always does, where it has waited through the night in the dark, expecting me to meet it in the slow light of dawn. But I do not open it.
This results in some things.
It means the page does not split cleanly at Psalms the way it has for most mornings of the past summer weeks. Today there is no thin ribbon bookmark to smooth out. No underlined words to wink at me in the half-light… words I marked in other seasons, when I was someone slightly different.
I do not read. So I do not pause.
I do not sip my coffee slowly, paused mid-verse in an ancient moment of contemplation, and the liquid thus burns the roof of my mouth. I wince and am instantly miffed, though I do not notice until I’m halfway through the mug.
I check the weather instead. It is 19°C and cloudy. I refresh the page twice, in case something changes. I refresh it a third time, wanting something to change.
Without the words, my thoughts come faster. I begin listing things… things I didn’t do, things I should do, things I won’t do. I do not know why the absence of certain words leaves so much room for these others. Yet I know it does.
The parable of the unforgiving servant does not circle back to me when I’m stuck behind a man at the post office who forgot his tracking number. I say “it’s fine” out loud but clench my jaw so tight it clicks.
I do not remember the verse about the yoke being easy. I remember deadlines, text threads, half-finished things.
The car is not filled with the silence of anything holy. Instead, it’s half-begun podcasts and whatever song I last shazamed in a moment of convenience-store boredom.
I do not pray as I drive. I make a one-handed to-do list on my phone in between swerved lanes. I write “email Jonas” and “laundry (sheets)” and forget to write “breathe.”
There’s a moment midday when I think about opening the phone’s Bible app. Instead, I scroll through headlines and posts. Somewhere, another dam broke. Somewhere else, a boy got swallowed by the algorithm. And everywhere, everyone I know is having more fun than me.
Is it a buffer between me and my darker self? That feels too simple. But without it, I feel thinner. Shallower. Stretched.
There was a season when I stopped opening it altogether. I had already stopped drinking by then, but the habits of that life had not yet loosened their grip. I remember how quickly things could turn. How easily I could move through a day without really being present in it.
I remember one afternoon in particular. I had been sent to the store for something simple, something small. I came back with it in my hands, having taken a detour I told no one about. The whole thing took only a few minutes. It always did. Quick enough to feel invisible. Quick enough to pretend it hadn’t happened.
But it had.
There was a look I came to recognize in the people closest to me. The look of someone who has stopped asking questions because the answers have already been given too many times.
Without something deeper to return to, I found that I could live on the surface of things like this. Moving quickly. Explaining little. Carrying more than I could name.
The book, when I open it, feels like a well I carry with me. I don’t understand it fully, but it has depth that I can return to. Without it, I move across the surface of things, never daring to look very deeply.
I do not notice when the light shifts. I do not see the turkeys cross the yard during magic hour. I sit too long at the desk. My back aches. I blame the chair. But I do not take a walk.
No verse about patience or dust or lilies reframes the day.
I get short with a friend over nothing. I reread the message I sent and wince, but I still think they deserve it.
It isn’t anything huge… to forget like this. It’s a small, unremarkable day shaped by absence. But I certainly feel its absence.
And tonight, when I lie down, I wonder if the words I did not read are still waiting where I left them.
Or if they have already gone quiet without me.
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AUTHOR BIO:
Zary Fekete grew up in Hungary and currently lives in Tokyo. He has a debut novella Words on the Page out with DarkWinter Lit Press and a short story collection The Written Path: A Journey Through Sobriety and Scripture out with Creative Texts. He enjoys books, podcasts, and many many many films. Twitter and Instagram: @ZaryFekete Bluesky:zaryfekete.bsky.social
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WHY WE CHOSE TO PUBLISH “I Do Not Open My Bible Today”:
Author Zaqary Fekete delivered a nicely contemplative piece thatexpresses a feeling we all likely have encountered at one time or another. He muses about what might happen if we change one item in our daily routine—in this case daily Bible reading. How might it affect our future? We felt the piece and its concept had just the right kind of provocative appeal.