My Own Handwriting From Twenty Years Ago

There is a pencil line under one sentence on page ninety and you put it there and you cannot remember why.

You took the book down last week for no particular reason and it fell open somewhere in the middle and there it was. Your own handwriting in the margin, small and neat and unmistakably yours, saying three words about something you no longer have any idea about.

And you sat down. Not out of sentiment exactly. Something more disorienting than that: the sense of having received a note from somebody who knew you very well and is not available for questions.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what anybody ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is what to do with that note, because there is an instruction in Jeremiah about old paths and it is not about going backward.

Ask for the old paths and walk therein

There is an instruction in Jeremiah 6 with four verbs in it, and the order they come in is the whole of it.

Thus saith the LORD, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. (Jeremiah 6:16, King James Version)

Count the verbs. Stand. See. Ask. Walk.

Stand still first. Then look. Then ask for the old paths, which means the asking is about something already there rather than something being invented. And then walk in it, which is present tense and forward motion.

That last one matters most. The old path is not somewhere a person goes back to and sits down. It is a road, and the instruction is to walk on it, now, which is what a road is for.

You are asked to walk on an old path and not to sit on it, and a pencil line from twenty years ago has never once been an invitation to go backward. Jeremiah 6:16 puts the walking after the asking and keeps the whole thing in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a margin on page ninety.

There is one more thing in the verse and it is what the walking produces.

Ye shall find rest for your souls. Rest is the outcome, and it is attached to walking rather than to remembering. Nothing in that sentence promises anything to a person who merely locates the path and stands looking at it.

You have rest attached to the walking, and finding an old path has never once been the same thing as arriving anywhere. It is written and ye shall find rest for your souls, the rest follows the walking and never the locating, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The note is from a real person and she is you

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being gentle about because the disorientation is real.

That woman is not a stranger and she is also not available.

Both halves are true and holding both is what makes it strange. She read that page, twenty years ago, and something in the sentence caught her hard enough to reach for a pencil. She was serious enough about it to write three words. And her meaning cannot now be reconstructed, which means the two women are not the same person in the way a photograph suggests.

But she is also not somebody else. Her handwriting is yours. The reasons she had were yours. And she left a mark on a page for no audience at all, which is a thing people only do when something has genuinely landed.

You are holding a note from a real person who was you, and twenty years of not remembering has never once made her a stranger. Jeremiah 6:16 asks for the old paths and then sends a person walking on them in the present, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman looking at her own margin note in a rocker.

And there is a second layer, and it is where the assignment comes from.

Two days have gone on trying to remember, and remembering is the one thing that is not available. Twenty years is too long and the reason is gone, and the more the trying goes on the more the note becomes a puzzle rather than a note.

There is a different thing available, and it is much better. Read the sentence again now, as the woman you currently are, and see whether it lands. That is not remembering. That is walking on the path.

You have a sentence available to be read now, and reading it again has never once required you to recover why you marked it. The written word puts stand and see and ask before walk and attaches the rest to the walking, and His Spirit is the one who turns a puzzle back into a note.

Ten pages of the one you already know

So here is the assignment, and it starts at page ninety.

Read ten pages of a book you already know.

That book. Start at page eighty five so that page ninety arrives in its context, and read through the underlined sentence and past it.

Ten pages. And when you get to the line, read the sentence out loud once.

You are sent to walk on an old path and never to sit down on it, and a pencil line has never once been an invitation backward. The Holy Spirit is the one in that rocker with you, and Jeremiah 6:16 sets stand and see and ask before walk and attaches the rest to the walking.

Here is why out loud.

The pencil line was made in silence, by a woman reading alone, and it has been silent for twenty years. Saying the sentence out loud is what puts it into the room where the rocker is, and a sentence in a room is available in a way that a sentence on a page is not.

And do not try to remember why. Notice what it does now instead. Those are two different activities and only one of them is possible.

You are able to read your own underlined sentence out loud tonight, and a mark on a page has never once needed its reason recovered to be worth returning to. Jeremiah 6:16 says ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman reading her own pencil line out loud in a front room.

And if it lands, underline it again in a different pencil. If it does not, leave it and read on. Both of those are the assignment finishing correctly.

You have an old path to walk on rather than to stand and look at, and rest has never once been promised to anybody who only located the road. It is written stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, the walking comes fourth and the rest comes after it, and the Spirit of God is saying it in that rocker today.