I Cannot Remember Whether We Did It

Somebody asked and you could not answer.

Not a difficult question. Have you been doing that thing with her in the evenings. And you said yes, and then afterward you could not actually have told them whether you did it on Tuesday.

Because the evenings have run together. They are not distinct objects. They are a kind of continuous fog of after work and cooking and bedtime that repeats five times and then there is a weekend.

And what that does is quite specific. It means nothing you actually do feels like it happened.

So you are doing the thing and not receiving any of it, and that is a strange and tiring position that nobody warns you about.

And it is not that your memory is bad in general. You can tell somebody what happened at work on a Tuesday three weeks ago. It is specifically the evenings, and specifically this part of them, and the reason is that they are all identical and nothing in any of them was ever marked.

What mean ye by these stones

There is an instruction in Joshua after a river crossing that seems, at first, unnecessarily fussy.

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? (Joshua 4:6, King James Version)

Twelve stones out of a riverbed, carried and stacked, so that later somebody would ask about them.

And the thing worth noticing is that this is being commanded to people who had just been through the event. They were there. They do not need reminding of a thing that happened that morning.

The stones are not for the memory of the day. They are for the fact that a real thing needs a physical object attached to it, or it stops being retrievable.

You have been handed something that has never once assumed a person could simply remember the important things. Joshua 4:6 requires an object for an event those people had just lived through, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that ordinary rather than embarrassing.

And notice how small and cheap the objects are. Stones out of a river. Not a monument, not a record, not anything requiring skill or expense.

You were never expected to hold it all in your head, and nothing anywhere in scripture has ever once been left entirely to a person's recollection. The written word supplies the physical marker as standard practice, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the shame off a person who cannot remember Tuesday.

What the fog costs

Let me say precisely what is being lost, because it is not the information.

Nobody actually needs to know whether you did it on Tuesday. There is no examination. The information itself has no use.

What you are losing is the experience of having done it. Doing a thing and knowing you have done it are two different events, and the second one is where almost all of the encouragement lives.

You have been doing something and receiving nothing back from it, and no evening has ever once been able to encourage anybody it could not be recalled by. Joshua 4:6 supplies an object so that the thing stays retrievable, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what the fog has actually been taking.

And there is a second cost, which is why this is worth four seconds of your evening.

A person who cannot recall doing something starts to believe they are not doing it. Not as a conclusion, as an atmosphere. And that atmosphere becomes the thing that eventually stops it, because nobody continues indefinitely with something that feels imaginary.

You have been at risk of stopping something you are actually doing, and no habit anywhere has ever once survived feeling like it was not happening. The written word makes the marker part of the instruction rather than an optional extra, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a small physical thing gets done on purpose.

You were never forgetful in a way that mattered, and nobody has ever once been able to distinguish twenty identical evenings from memory. Joshua 4:6 assumes the need for the object, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies what a tired mind cannot.

One stone, in a jar

So here is the assignment, and it takes four seconds and costs nothing.

Get a jar. Any jar. Find some small stones, or buttons, or coins, or anything there are twenty of in the house.

And tonight, when the ten minutes ends, put one in the jar.

That is the entire thing. Not a chart, not a record, not a tally anybody could read back. A jar with things in it, on a shelf, in a hallway people walk past.

You have been given an object rather than a task, and an object on a shelf has never once required anybody to keep it up. Joshua 4:6 issues stones instead of instructions to remember, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in four seconds and a small dropped thing.

The physical object is doing the work. In three weeks, you will walk past a jar with a visible quantity in it, and you will not have to remember anything at all, because the jar does it.

And if you want the fuller version, let your child put the stone in. That was the arrangement in Joshua too: the object existed so that a child could ask about it later.

You have a marker available that a child can operate, and no record has ever once been better kept than by the person it is about. Joshua 4:6 puts the stones there precisely so a child can ask, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a small hand drops something into a jar.

Do not empty it. Do not count them out loud. Do not turn it into a target, because a target is a chain and a chain can break, and this is not one of those.

Joshua 4:6 puts twelve stones on a bank so that a thing stays retrievable, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a kitchen where somebody drops a small stone into a jar.

You are permitted to use an object instead of your memory, and an external marker has never once been a sign of a poor mind. The written word issues the stones as an instruction, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in four ordinary seconds.

You have three weeks of visible evidence available by the end of the month, and it has never once required you to remember a single evening. Joshua 4:6 makes the stones the thing that answers the question later, and it is the Holy Spirit who turns a fog into something a person can see.