The Bookmark Is Still Where I Left It

The marker is still on page forty one, and it has been since February.

You know exactly where it is. You could go and put your hand on it now. It is on the shelf by the window with a strip of card in it, and the card is sitting between two pages you were halfway through on a Tuesday evening seven months ago.

And you have not opened it since, and here is the reason, said as precisely as I can manage.

The page is a record. As long as that card stays where it is, the book is holding an exact account of the day you stopped, and opening it means looking at that account with your own eyes.

So it stays on the shelf and you walk past it, and the whole thing has become an object in the room rather than a thing you do.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

That book has been functioning as a witness against you for seven months, and that is not a thing anybody warns you about when they hand you a bookmark.

So I am not going to tell you to just open it. Seven months of walking past something is not undone by being told to try. And I am not going to tell you that seven months is not very long, because you know how long it is and being managed about it will close this tab.

Let me show you a verse about the making of something new and where it gets made.

Behold, I will do a new thing

There is a line in Isaiah about something arriving, and the location of it is the whole point.

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19, King James Version)

I will even make a way in the wilderness.

Now stay on where the new thing happens, because everything is in that. Not somewhere else. Not after the wilderness has been left behind and the person has got themselves somewhere more suitable.

In the wilderness. In the exact unpromising place, with nothing cleared and nothing improved first.

You have a new thing available in the room you are actually standing in, and a way made in a wilderness has never once required the wilderness to be tidied first. Isaiah 43:19 puts the making squarely inside the bad place, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with a man who walks past a shelf every day.

Now notice the timing word, because it is doing real work.

Now it shall spring forth. Not once conditions improve, and not after a period of preparation that would let somebody feel ready. The verse puts it at now, in the middle of the sentence, as a present matter.

You were never being asked to get ready before this could start again, and a thing that springs forth now has never once waited for anybody to feel prepared. The Holy Spirit is the one who begins things in the middle of an unpromising season, and Isaiah 43:19 puts the new thing at now rather than at later.

And here is the third thing, which is the question in the middle of the verse.

Shall ye not know it. He asks whether they will recognize it, which implies that a new thing can arrive and go unnoticed. It does not announce itself. It can be small, and it can look like nothing much, and it can be walked past.

You have never once needed a new thing to look impressive to be a new thing, and something small has never once been easier to recognize than something loud. Isaiah 43:19 asks whether it will even be noticed, and the Spirit of God is the one with a man who has an unopened book on a shelf by a window.

The card is not evidence of anything

Here is the practical half, and it starts with what that bookmark actually is.

It is a piece of card. It has no opinion.

That sounds facetious and I mean it completely literally, because the whole of the last seven months rests on a strip of card being treated as a document. It is not recording anything. It is not keeping score. It is a piece of paper marking a place, put there by a man who fully intended to come back on the Wednesday.

The account you are afraid of reading does not exist anywhere except in you.

You have been avoiding a witness that has never once been in the room, and a strip of card has never once held a record of anything. The Spirit of God is the one with a man who has been walking past a shelf since February, and Isaiah 43:19 makes the new thing in the wilderness rather than somewhere cleaner.

Now here is the thing about page forty one specifically, and it is the part that will make tonight easier.

You do not have to go there.

That is the whole obstacle and it is removable. The page is where the fear lives, and nothing about opening a book requires you to open it at the page the card is in. Take the card out without looking at the page. Open it somewhere else entirely. Take ten words from wherever it falls open.

The book does not know where you were and does not care.

You have permission to open it anywhere except where the card is, and a book opened in the wrong place has never once counted for less than one opened in the right one. Isaiah 43:19 makes a road where there is no road rather than sending anybody back to the last one, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man about to take a card out of a page without reading it.

And here is what going back to page forty one would actually cost, said plainly.

It would cost you tonight. Because you would open at forty one and feel the seven months, and read three lines, and it would be heavy in a way ten words from page ninety would not be, and the chances of you opening it again on Thursday would be worse than they are now.

Starting where you are is not the easier option dressed up. It is the only one with a Thursday in it.

You are allowed to abandon page forty one entirely, and a page left unfinished has never once had to be returned to before anything else could happen. The Spirit of God is the one who makes rivers in a desert rather than restoring the old riverbed, and the written word never once asks anybody to go back and pick up where they were.

Open it anywhere but there

So here is the assignment, and it has a prohibition in it that matters more than the instruction.

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

And for you that has a specific shape. Take the card out without looking at the page it is in. Put it on the table. Then open the book anywhere at all and take ten words from that page.

Do not go to page forty one. Not tonight and not this week.

You have a whole book that is not page forty one, and ten words from anywhere in it has never once counted for less than ten from where you stopped. Isaiah 43:19 makes a way in the wilderness without asking anybody to walk back to the last road, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a room with a man and a strip of card.

And here is what to do with the card afterward, because it has been doing too much work.

Do not put it back. Leave it on the table, or throw it away, and let the book close on nothing.

Because a book with no marker in it is just a book. A book with a marker in it is a book with a date in it, and you have had a date in yours since February, and it has been enough to keep the whole thing on a shelf. Then stop, because ten words is the assignment and tonight owes you nothing more than that.

You have permission to close it with no marker in it at all, and a book with no date in it has never once accused anybody of anything. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a man after ninety seconds on the shelf side of the room, and Isaiah 43:19 puts the new thing at now and in the wilderness.