The Pile Grew In The Worst Year

Every one of those books was bought between March and December of the worst year you have had.

You can date them. Not all of them, but enough. There is a receipt in one from the month everything happened, and one you bought at an airport, and one you bought on a Wednesday afternoon when you had nowhere to be and could not face going home.

So the stack is not a backlog. It is a timeline. Nine books, each one marking a week when you reached for something, and the reaching happened in the middle of the hardest twelve months of your life.

And you have not read any of them, and every time you look at the pile you feel behind.

That is the wrong feeling and it is the only one available, because nobody ever told you what that pile is.

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 a man ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it adds one more thing to be behind on.

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 kind of object that is, because it is not a to-do list and it never was.

A stack of things bought during a hard year is a record of a man who kept reaching. That is a completely different object.

These stones shall be a memorial

There is an instruction in Joshua 4 about a pile of stones, and the reason given for it is the whole point.

That this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them, That the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD; when it passed over Jordan, the waters of Jordan were cut off: and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever. (Joshua 4:6-7, King James Version)

Twelve men carried twelve stones out of a riverbed and stacked them up.

Notice what the stones are for. They are for a question that has not been asked yet. Somebody in the future is going to see a pile and want to know what it means, and the stones exist to make the question possible.

You are not being charged for anything, and a receipt from the worst week has never once been evidence against you. The Spirit of God is standing in that room, and it is written that these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.

And notice what they are not for. They are not a task. Nobody is expected to do anything with them. There is no obligation attached to a memorial; the whole function of it is to hold a fact where it can be seen.

You are looking at a memorial and not a task list, and nine books bought in a hard year have never once been nine things left undone. Joshua 4:6 sets the stones up to answer a question rather than to be worked through, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a stack beside a bed.

There is one more thing in that chapter and it is very physical.

The stones came out of the middle of the river. Not from the bank. Men walked down into the place where the water had been and picked them up off the bed, and the memorial is made of the actual ground of the crossing.

You have a pile made out of the ground you crossed, and books bought in the worst months have never once been the wrong books to own. It is written and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever, the stones were lifted out of the riverbed itself, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

A memorial filed as a backlog

Here is the mechanism, and it is one substitution.

Somewhere the pile got filed as a list of tasks, and everything else follows from that.

A task list produces guilt automatically. That is its function. An item on a task list that has not been done is a small standing debt, and nine of them stacked up is nine debts in a column beside where you sleep.

But not one of those books was ever a task. Each one was an act. A shop, or an airport, or a Wednesday that could not be filled, and a hand reaching out for something, and the reaching was the whole event. Nothing was promised at the register.

Same nine objects. Filed as tasks they are a debt. Filed as what they are, they are nine days you did not go under.

You are standing beside a record and not a reckoning, and a hard year has never once been a year that owed anybody anything. The Holy Spirit is the one at that stack with you tonight, and Joshua 4:6 puts the stones up as a sign rather than as a job for somebody to work through.

You are reading a memorial as a debt column, and a book bought on a bad Wednesday has never once been an obligation you took on. Joshua 4:6 makes a pile of stones a sign rather than a job, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who has been auditing his own hardest year.

And there is a second layer, and it is why the pile cannot be touched.

A memorial to a hard year is heavy to handle. Picking one up means the month it came from arrives with it, and that is not nothing, and some part of you has understood that and left the whole stack alone rather than open one door.

Which is a reasonable instinct and it has quietly cost you nine books.

You have permission to pick one up and let the month come with it, and a memory arriving alongside a book has never once been a reason to leave the book shut. The written word has men carrying stones up out of a riverbed on purpose so the thing would stay visible, and His Spirit is the one who steadies a man handling his own record.

One off the pile, where you actually sit

So here is the assignment, and it is a matter of moving one object.

Take one off the pile tonight and put it somewhere you actually sit.

One. Not the whole stack, not in order, and not the one from the worst month unless it comes to hand first.

And nobody is suggesting you get rid of any of them. Not tonight, not ever, and especially not these. A memorial does not get thinned out because it is heavy.

Then put it where you actually end up: the chair, the deck, the counter, the arm of the couch.

You have months that God kept, and a stack beside a bed has never once been a bill for the year it came out of. His Spirit is holding that corner of the room right now, which is why the answer to the question in Joshua 4:6 is a story about what He did.

Here is why moving one is the whole assignment.

A memorial that cannot be handled has stopped doing its job. Stones you cannot walk up to are just a heap. Taking one book off the stack and putting it in a place where ordinary life happens is what makes the pile handleable again, and a handleable pile is one a man can take from.

And one, because nine at once is the hard year all in one go, and nobody is asking for that tonight.

You are able to take one thing off a memorial and carry it into an ordinary room, and moving one book has never once required you to revisit a whole year. Joshua 4:6 says these stones shall be for a memorial, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man carrying one book out onto a deck.

If the month it came from turns up with it, let it turn up. It is your month. It happened, you got through it, and there is a stack of evidence beside your bed that you kept reaching while it was happening.

You have nine days of reaching stacked up where you sleep, and a hard year has never once been a year you failed to read in. It is written that the waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the LORD, the memorial exists to hold that where it can be seen, and the Spirit of God is holding it here.