The One That Got Me Through That Winter

You read it in January four years ago when the furnace was out and everything else was out too, and you have read it every January since.

It was not a great book. You would say that out loud. It was the book that happened to be in your hand during about eleven weeks that you would not want to do again, and something about it held, and you got through, and it is bound up with the getting through in a way you cannot separate.

So every January you read it. And you have started wondering whether that is a bit much. Whether a grown man returning annually to a paperback because of a bad winter four years ago is doing something slightly superstitious.

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 the annual part, because Scripture is full of markers that got set up on purpose and returned to, and none of them are superstition.

Hitherto hath the Lord helped us

There is a moment in 1 Samuel 7 where a man takes a rock, puts it somewhere specific, and gives it a name.

Then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us. (1 Samuel 7:12, King James Version)

Read what he actually did.

He took a stone. He set it in a particular place, between two named locations, so that anybody traveling that road would come past it. And he gave it a name that is a sentence: hitherto hath the LORD helped us.

That is a physical object, deliberately positioned, with a meaning attached, put there so that people would encounter it again.

You are keeping a marker and not performing a superstition, and going back every January has never once been a thing to be embarrassed about. 1 Samuel 7:12 has a stone deliberately set between two places with a sentence attached so that people would come past it, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a paperback in a cold month.

There is one word in that name worth stopping on.

Hitherto. Up to this point. The stone does not say the trouble is over or that nothing else is coming. It says: as far as here, He helped. Which is a much more modest and much more durable claim than a triumph, and it is the reason the stone stays useful in the next hard year.

You have a marker that says as far as here, and one bad winter you got through has never once needed to have been the last one. It is written and called the name of it Ebenezer, saying, Hitherto hath the LORD helped us, the claim is up to this point rather than forever after, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

Superstition and a marker are different things

Here is the mechanism, and the difference is precise and worth having.

Superstition believes the object does something. That is the whole of it.

A superstitious man reads the book in January because he thinks not reading it might make the year go badly. There is a causal claim in there, and the object has power in it, and the whole thing runs on a small fear.

Now check yours. What happens if you miss a January. Not the disappointment, the belief. Do you think the year would go worse. Almost certainly you do not, and that means there is no causal claim, and no fear underneath it, and therefore no superstition.

What you have instead is a stone between Mizpeh and Shen. An object in a place, with a sentence attached, that you come past deliberately once a year.

You are walking past a stone you set up, and an annual return has never once been the same thing as a belief that the object does something. 1 Samuel 7:12 has the stone put in the road so people encounter it and gives it a sentence rather than a power, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who has started to suspect his own January.

And there is a second layer, and it is the useful part.

The reason the marker works is that the sentence on it is about God and not about the book. It was not the paperback that got you through that winter. The paperback was in your hand while it happened, and what the annual reading does is put you back in front of a fact: as far as here, He helped.

That is not the book doing something. That is a man walking past his own stone on purpose.

You have a sentence that was always about Him, and a book in your hand during a hard winter has never once been the thing that carried you. The written word puts the name and the sentence on the stone and the helping on the Lord, and His Spirit is the one who tells a man what he has actually been doing every January.

Ten pages of the one you already know

So here is the assignment, and it does not wait for January.

Read ten pages of a book you already know.

That one. The winter one. And read it now rather than in January, which is the small change in the whole assignment.

Ten pages, tonight or this week, out of season.

Here is why out of season.

An annual thing can start to feel like a rite, and a rite is where the suspicion of superstition comes from. Reading ten pages of it in June is the cleanest possible proof that it is not one: nothing is being observed, no date is being kept, and the stone is simply being walked past because a man felt like walking past it.

And it will be a slightly different experience out of season, which is worth having on its own.

You are able to walk past your own stone in the wrong month, and ten pages out of season has never once been a lesser return than the annual one. 1 Samuel 7:12 says hitherto hath the LORD helped us, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man reading his winter book in the middle of a warm week.

And keep the January. Nobody is asking you to give that up, and after tonight it will not be the only time you go past it.

You have a stone that was set on purpose, and a marker has never once had power in it to be superstitious about. It is written then Samuel took a stone, and set it between Mizpeh and Shen, the setting is deliberate and the sentence is about who helped, and the Spirit of God is saying it on a porch today.