The Book From The Good Year

That book has a summer inside the cover and you go back into it about twice a year.

It is not really a book to you any more. It is 2016, or whichever year it was, and the specific quality of that stretch: where you were living, who was in the house, the thing that had not happened yet. And forty pages of it puts you back in there for an hour, reliably, in a way that photographs never manage.

And then you get out of the chair and the phrase arrives. Living in the past. And it arrives in your own voice, in a slightly disapproving register, and it has been arriving for about two years.

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 that phrase, because it has taken over an act that Scripture actually commands.

Deliberate remembering is a thing God tells people to do, on purpose, out loud, and it is not the same as being stuck.

I will remember the works of the Lord

There is a decision in Psalm 77 made by somebody in a bad stretch, and the decision is to go back on purpose.

I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. (Psalm 77:11, King James Version)

Read the grammar. I will remember.

That is a resolve rather than a mood. Remembering here is something a person decides to do, deliberately, as an act, and the psalmist says it twice in one verse because he means it as a commitment.

And notice where he is when he says it. The first half of that psalm is a man in genuine trouble, asking whether God has forgotten to be gracious. It is not written from a comfortable chair. The remembering is what he does in the bad stretch, on purpose, because the good things happened and are still true.

You are doing something Scripture resolves to do, and going back into a good year has never once been the same thing as being stuck in it. Psalm 77:11 makes the remembering a deliberate act and says it twice in one verse, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a sun faded paperback.

There is one more thing in it worth having.

Thy wonders of old. Old is not a criticism in that sentence. The age of the thing is what makes it worth remembering, because it happened and it is settled and nothing can now unhappen it, which is a quality only old things have.

You have a year that cannot be taken back, and reading yourself into something settled has never once been an escape from anything. It is written surely I will remember thy wonders of old, the age of the thing is what makes it solid rather than what makes it suspect, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

Nostalgia and remembering are not the same

Here is the mechanism, and the distinction is real and worth having.

Nostalgia has a specific feature: it makes the present look worse.

That is the test, and it is a good one. A person in nostalgia comes out of the memory diminished. The present is thinner, the people around them are less interesting, and there is a small resentment attached to whatever came after the good year.

Now run that test on your hour with the book. What actually happens when you get out of the chair. Not the phrase, the state. Do you resent the present. Are the people in your house less interesting. Or do you come out warmer, and slightly more able for the evening.

If it is the second one, that is not nostalgia and the phrase does not apply, and it has been applying itself anyway.

You are coming out warmer and not diminished, and an hour in a good year has never once made the present look worse. Psalm 77:11 has a man in trouble go back deliberately to what happened and use it, and the Holy Spirit is present with a woman being accused by a phrase in her own voice.

And there is a second layer, and it explains why the phrase got in.

Living in the past is a phrase built for people who are refusing to accept a loss. It is a real category and it describes a real harm.

But you are not refusing anything. You know exactly what year it is, and the thing that has not happened yet in that book has long since happened, and you are not pretending otherwise for one second of that hour. You are visiting, and you know the way out, and you take it.

You have permission to visit a year that is over, and knowing the way out has never once been the same thing as refusing a loss. The written word has the remembering resolved on twice in a single verse by a man in the middle of trouble, and His Spirit is the one who takes a borrowed phrase off a good hour.

Ten pages of the one you already know

So here is the assignment, and it is that book on purpose.

Read ten pages of a book you already know.

That one. The good year one. Not something new to prove the face is forward, and not that one framed as a last visit before you get on with things.

Ten pages, on purpose, chosen rather than fallen into.

Here is why on purpose is the whole of it.

The phrase gets its power from the hour being unexamined. An hour a person falls into is available to be called anything afterward. An hour a person chooses, having looked at it and named it, is not, because the choosing is itself a statement about what it is.

So choose it. Sit down deliberately. And when you get up, notice the state you are in rather than reaching for the phrase.

You are able to choose the good year on purpose tonight, and ten pages of a settled thing has never once been an hour spent facing backward. Psalm 77:11 says I will remember the works of the LORD, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman opening a sun faded paperback deliberately.

And if the phrase arrives anyway, run the test on it. It will not survive being asked whether the present looks worse.

You have a resolve and not a retreat, and a deliberate remembering has never once been a refusal to be where you are. It is written surely I will remember thy wonders of old, the resolve is stated twice by a man asking whether God has forgotten to be gracious, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a garden today.