A Shelf Of Things I Started

You can see four of them from where you are sitting.

The machine in the corner. The wool in the basket with the needles still in it. The box of paints on top of the cupboard, and the folder of things for the course you were going to do.

And now the language would be the fifth.

That is the whole reason the book has been shut since June. Not tiredness. Not lack of time. It is that starting it again would place one more object on a shelf that already has four things on it, and you know what that shelf looks like, because you look at it every day.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are not looking at a shelf of failures. You are looking at an accusation that you assembled yourself out of ordinary objects, and it is doing a great deal of work.

So I am not going to tell you to go and finish one of them. That is the standard advice and it is exactly wrong, because it accepts the terms of the shelf and the terms are the problem.

Let me show you a verse about mornings.

They are new every morning

There is a line in the middle of Lamentations, which is a book about wreckage, and the line is the most famous thing in it.

They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:23, King James Version)

New every morning.

Now stay on the frequency, because the frequency is what makes it useful. Not new occasionally. Not new after a suitable interval, and not new once somebody has demonstrated that they will use them properly this time.

Every morning. Including tomorrow, and including the morning after a day when nothing was done.

You have mercies arriving on a schedule that has never once consulted yesterday, and a new morning has never once been issued on the strength of the day before it. Lamentations 3:23 sets the frequency at every morning without any conditions attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a woman who can see four objects from her chair.

Now notice where in the book that sentence sits, because it matters enormously.

Lamentations is a book about a city that was destroyed. It is not an encouraging book and it does not try to be, and the chapter this verse is in is one of the bleakest in scripture. The mercies are not described from a comfortable position. They are named in the middle of real wreckage by somebody who is looking straight at it.

You have never once needed to be looking at something tidy to say that line, and a room with four unfinished things in it has never once been the wrong room for it. The Holy Spirit is the one who says it over a woman looking at a shelf, and Lamentations 3:23 speaks from the middle of actual ruins.

And here is the third thing, which is whose faithfulness the verse is about.

Great is thy faithfulness. Not mine. The sentence is not a statement about the consistency of the person speaking it, and it arrives at the end of a chapter where that person has been describing his own collapse at length.

You were never the one whose faithfulness this rests on, and a verse about steadiness has never once been a verse about the reader's record. Lamentations 3:23 names whose faithfulness it is in the same breath, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has not opened a book since June.

The shelf is four separate objects

Here is the practical half, and it is about what is actually on that shelf.

It is not a shelf. It is four things that happen to be in the same room.

The machine came out of a season of wanting to make things. The wool was started in a winter of being unwell. The paints were a birthday present from somebody who thought you would like them, and you did, for about a month. The folder was a plan that turned out to be wrong for your life at the time.

Four separate stories with four separate reasons, and the only thing they share is a room.

You have been reading four unrelated objects as one indictment, and things that sit near each other have never once been a pattern. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who assembled a case out of what was in her line of sight, and Lamentations 3:23 issues the mercies fresh with no reference to the previous day.

Now here is what the shelf is actually a record of, and this will be uncomfortable in the other direction.

Appetite. Every one of those objects is a thing you wanted. Somebody with no interest in anything has an empty shelf, and nobody has ever praised her for it, and you would not want to be her.

The shelf is evidence of a woman who keeps wanting things. That is not nothing and it is not a flaw.

You have a record of wanting rather than a record of failing, and a started thing has never once been the same kind of object as a thing never begun. Lamentations 3:23 speaks from inside wreckage without calling the speaker the cause of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what four objects in a room actually testify to.

And here is why finishing one of them would not help, said plainly.

Because the shelf is not asking for completion. It is asking what kind of person owns it, and that is a question about character, and finishing the wool would not answer it, it would only postpone it to the next object.

You cannot argue with a shelf by producing evidence. The shelf will always want more.

You are not going to satisfy something that has never once accepted an answer, and a finished object has never once closed a question about a character. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a woman past a case she has been trying to answer, and the written word puts the faithfulness in somebody else's name.

Open it today with nothing on the shelf changed

So here is the assignment, and the shelf stays exactly as it is.

Open it once today without going back to the beginning of anything.

Do not finish anything first. Do not tidy the shelf, do not put the wool away, and do not clear the paints off the cupboard to make room for a new start.

Leave all four exactly where they are and open the book anyway.

You have permission to open it with the shelf untouched, and one more thing begun has never once been a heavier object than one more morning refused. Lamentations 3:23 hands over new mercies every morning with no reference to yesterday's shelf, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman opening a book in a room she has not cleaned.

And here is the one sentence to say before you open it, because the shelf will speak first and it always does.

Say it out loud, looking at the four of them: those are four things I wanted.

That is true, it is the whole honest content of that shelf, and it takes four seconds. It does not argue and it does not promise anything about the fifth. Then open it, take ten words, and shut it, because ten words is the assignment and today owes you nothing further.

You have four seconds of true speech to say over that shelf, and an honest description has never once been the same as a defense. The Spirit of God is the one in the room when a woman says it out loud, and Lamentations 3:23 names whose faithfulness the whole thing rests on.