The Ledger You Have Never Used

You could do it from memory right now, and that is what frightens you.

The Tuesday in March four years ago. The two Christmases. The week your mother was in hospital and what he said on the Thursday and the exact tone he said it in. The birthday. The other birthday.

Not vague impressions. Dates. Sequences. What was said and what was said back.

And you have never used one single item of it. Not once, in nine years. Not in a bad argument, not at two in the morning, not in the row after the wedding when it was right there and it would have finished him.

You have been proud of that. Quietly, and never out loud, but yes.

What has changed is that about six weeks ago you were putting a shirt away, and something entirely unrelated to any of it went through your head, and you noticed that the ledger opened by itself, and that it was up to date.

Up to date. Something from this year is in it, and you did not decide to put it there.

Which means you are not remembering. You are keeping.

And the thing you cannot get away from, since the shirt, is this: you have never used it because you are a good woman, and you have never stopped keeping it, and nine years of not using it has not made the book any thinner.

Paul prays for the whole of a person and he is specific

There is a benediction at the end of a letter that gets read at the close of services and rushed past, and every word in it is load bearing.

And the very God of peace sanctify you wholly; and I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless.1 Thessalonians 5:23

Read who is doing it. The very God of peace sanctify you. Not: sanctify yourselves. Not: work toward it. He is the subject of the verb, and Paul is praying rather than instructing, which he does not do lightly and which tells you where he thinks this comes from.

And then read the word wholly, and then read the list.

Spirit and soul and body. He is being deliberately exhaustive, because he is naming the parts of a person that ordinary Christian effort does not reach. Anybody can govern their body to some extent. Nobody can get into the room where a ledger is kept, and Paul knows it, so he prays for the whole of the person rather than exhorting the part that can be exhorted.

So take this now, with the shirt still in your hand. You are not a woman who needs to try harder to let things go. The written word puts the sanctifying in God's own hands and reaches parts of you that you cannot reach yourself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does it, and nine years of exemplary restraint was never going to close a book you did not open.

The restraint was real. It was also the wrong department.

Let me be very clear about what I am not saying, because a message like this can be turned into a weapon against a woman who is already doing more than anybody knows.

I am not saying the nine years were fake. They were not. Every single time you did not use it, that was a real act of love, done at cost, with no witness and no credit, and it is one of the reasons your marriage still exists and your children have a house with peace in it.

And I am not telling you that the book is a sin you should feel ashamed of. It is not primarily a sin. It is what a soul does when it has been hurt in a place it could not talk about: it starts writing things down so that at least somebody knows.

The keeping is not malice. The keeping is a witness statement taken by a woman who had no one else to take it.

But it cannot be your job to un-keep it, because you did not decide to start, and a thing you did not start is not a thing you can stop by deciding.

You have a God who sanctifies wholly and reaches the whole of you. That is what is written, the Holy Spirit is the one who does it, and you have not failed at a job that was never handed to you.

What was preached in the plain hall

There was a hall near the middle of Los Angeles in 1895 where a man named Phineas Bresee refused to let anybody rent a seat, and the doctrine preached in that plain room was a clean heart: God's work, inside, given to people who had been treated as though they were not eligible.

Those two came out of one conviction and they have to stay together, because separated, this doctrine goes bad in a way that is precisely engineered to hurt you.

Preached where the good seats are bought, an inward work becomes a level, and a level becomes a ranking, and a woman who keeps an accurate ledger will do the obvious thing with a ranking, which is to start keeping a second book about her own spiritual position. Now there are two ledgers.

Preached in a plain hall, there is nothing to rank. Nobody is ahead. It is a gift given to people who came in with nothing.

You are eligible today, book open, up to date. The written word puts the whole of it in His hands and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work.