He Will Bring The Old Story Up

It will get told again and you know exactly who tells it.

It is about forty years old. It happened when you were about twenty two and it was, at the time, genuinely funny, and you laughed at it yourself for about the first decade.

Somewhere in the second decade you stopped finding it funny and did not say so, because saying so would have been a much bigger thing than the story.

And now it is a fixture. Somebody brings it out most years, usually about an hour in, usually to whoever is newest at the table. And everybody laughs, and you laugh, and it takes ninety seconds.

Here is what I think has actually happened, and I do not think anybody has ever put it to you.

The story is not the problem. The problem is that the story is the only thing about you that gets told in that room, and it is about a man you have not been for four decades. Somewhere in there you built a business, or held a family together through something nobody knew about, or did the thing in nineteen ninety that not one person at that table has ever heard about.

None of that gets told. The twenty two year old gets told.

Remember ye not the former things

There is a line in Isaiah that is usually read as a comfort for people with regrets, and I want to point it at something else.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. (Isaiah 43:18, King James Version)

Read who is speaking and what He is saying about His own record keeping. God, of all parties, the one with a perfect memory and every right to use it, is the one saying do not go back over the old material.

And the next verse says: behold, I will do a new thing. The reason for not consulting the archive is not that the archive is false. It is that God is working on something current and the old file is not where He is.

That is a startling amount of freedom for a man who has been filed at twenty two.

You are not the man in that archive as far as God is concerned, and it is written into Isaiah 43:18 that the former things are the ones not to be consulted. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that a live fact for a man sitting at a table where the archive is being read out, and Scripture puts the not remembering on God's own side.

And notice that He does not deny the former things happened.

You were never asked to pretend the story is untrue, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a thing being true from a thing being current. Isaiah 43:18 says do not consider them rather than saying they did not occur, and the written word leaves the record intact and simply declines to work from it.

Why correcting it will not work

Now let me close off the move that has been under consideration for about three years.

There has been a plan to say something. Not aggressively. A light correction, at the right moment: actually, that was a long time ago, and here is what I do now.

I want you to see exactly how that lands in a room, because it will not land the way it sounds in your head.

Everybody at that table will hear a man who minds. Not a man setting a record straight. A man who has been carrying it, which will be new information to most of them, and slightly awkward, and the awkwardness will attach itself to you rather than to the story. Somebody will say they did not mean anything by it. Somebody else will feel got at. And the story will still get told next year, only now with a small pause before it. The correction costs you more than the story does, which is why some part of you has never used it.

You were never wrong to want the record corrected, and Scripture puts the setting aside of an old file in God's hands rather than in a man's speech. Isaiah 43:18 declines the archive without arguing with it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has been holding a correction for three years without using it.

And here is the thing that has never occurred to you and that I want to hand over. The people in that room are not deciding who you are. They are telling a story they know. Those are two completely different activities and you have been treating them as one.

Nobody at that table has assessed you and concluded that the twenty two year old is the whole of it. They have a story, they like telling it, and telling a story is nearly always about the telling.

You have not been assessed and found to be that man, and the written word puts the reckoning of a person with God rather than with a room's repertoire. Isaiah 43:18 has God declining to consider the things of old, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a room's habit out of the category of a verdict.

Decide what your hands do

So here is the assignment, and it is about ninety seconds and about your hands.

Decide what you will do with your hands while the story is told, and tell nobody the decision is made.

Ninety seconds is not long, and it is entirely bearable if a man has something to do and unbearable if he has nothing. At the moment you sit there with your face arranged, which is the most exhausting possible way to spend it.

So: get up and fill something. Turn to the person beside you and pour them something. Pick up two plates. Go and get a thing from another room that somebody mentioned twenty minutes ago.

You are able to be doing something with your hands for ninety seconds, and it has never once required anybody to stop telling anything. Isaiah 43:18 sets an old file aside without contesting one word of it, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man carrying two plates while a room laughs at somebody who no longer exists.

And I want you to notice what that does, because it is more than a distraction. A man who is moving is not being defined. He is present, doing something, in the room, while a story about a stranger goes past.

The story does not need answering. It needs outlasting, and outlasting is a thing a pair of hands can do.

You are outlasting a story rather than correcting it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is doing something current with a man of sixty eight. The written word says behold, I will do a new thing in the very next breath after declining the old ones, and Isaiah 43:18 leaves the archive closed rather than disputed.