The Tin On The Windowsill

It was a biscuit tin to start with, and it kept the picture on the lid for years before the picture wore off.

You put it on the windowsill above the sink because that is where you stood most, and the idea was very simple: when something came up, you wrote it on a slip and folded it once and put it in.

Grandchildren went in there. Neighbors. The girl from the shop who had the accident. The one you never told anybody about.

You would open it on a Tuesday morning and take out four or five at random and pray them, and put them back, and shut the lid, and get on with the day.

The lid has not been off in four years.

You still dust it. It still has the same dent in the side from when it came off the sill in the storm. You still stand at that sink most of the day and you can see it out of the corner of your eye every time you fill the kettle.

You just do not open it any more.

Now, before we go anywhere, hear me.

I am not telling you off.

There is no failure in a shut tin. Nobody has been let down and I have not caught you out. Four years of not opening a lid is not four years of not believing, and I am not going to tell you that anything in there has gone the way it has gone because the lid stayed on.

I am saying I noticed it is dusted. That is all. A person does not dust a thing they have finished with.

The book they did not know about

Here is a verse from the very end of the Old Testament, and it happens in a room where nobody thought anybody was listening.

Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name.Malachi 3:16

Look at the situation. This is a group of ordinary people at the end of a long and discouraging stretch, talking among themselves, with no expectation that any of it counts.

And what the verse tells us is that a record was being kept on the other side of the room. A book of remembrance was written before him. While they were talking. Nobody in that room knew. They were not performing for it and they could not see it and it was written anyway.

So here it is, said directly to you, standing at that sink.

You are in a book that has been open for four years while yours was shut. Not one day, not once you get back into the habit, not when you feel able to lift the lid. Right now, with your hands in the water, everything said at that windowsill went into a record that nobody had to remind Him to keep. That is not my comfort to you. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real woman in a real kitchen on a real morning.

Now, why did the lid stay on?

I think it is because a tin fills up. Four or five slips is a pleasant Tuesday. Nine years of slips is a weight, and every one of them has a face on it, and opening the lid started meaning holding all of them at once.

That is not backsliding. That is a woman who kept every single one of them because she could not bring herself to throw a person away, and then found the keeping had gotten heavy.

But look at who is holding the other book. It is not you. You are not the archivist of your own family's needs, and you were never appointed to that. There is a book of remembrance and it is written before Him, which means the weight of remembering sits on the other side of the room from where you are standing.

And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You have a record kept for you, and it has not thinned out in four years. The word says the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and hearkened is a word about leaning in, and it is His Spirit who carries a written promise into a real kitchen where the kettle is going on again.

Nothing in that tin has gone stale. Slips do not go stale. That is not what they are made of.