I Laid This Year's Report Next To Last Year's

You got the old one out.

It was in a folder, or a box, or the drawer where those things end up, and you went and found it and put it on the table beside the new one, and you read the two of them together.

And you were not being obsessive. You were doing something that feels completely rational, which is looking for a direction of travel. One page is a moment. Two pages, you thought, is a line.

And then you sat there for a while afterward feeling worse than when you started, and could not entirely say why.

I can say why. It is because two points do not make a line, and you have been drawing one anyway, and the line you drew went somewhere neither page mentioned.

Thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this

There is a sentence in Ecclesiastes that is more pointed than most people expect.

Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this. (Ecclesiastes 7:10, King James Version)

It is not saying the past was bad. It is not even saying the past was not better. It is making a claim about the quality of the question.

Thou dost not enquire wisely. The question itself is the problem, because it assumes its own premise and then goes looking for support.

And that is exactly what two reports side by side produce. You do not compare them neutrally. You arrive with a question already loaded, and then the pages supply material for whichever answer you came in with.

You have been asking a question that has never once been able to give you an honest answer. Ecclesiastes 7:10 identifies the enquiry rather than the era as the fault, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person the shape of their own question.

And notice how kind that is, underneath. It does not accuse you of nostalgia or of being unfair to anybody. It says the instrument is wrong.

You were never being told your worry was foolish, and scripture has never once dismissed a person for looking backward. The written word corrects the method and leaves the person alone, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a correction from landing as a rebuke.

What two documents cannot do

Let me be precise about the mathematics, because it matters.

A report is a summary of a period, written by a particular person, in a particular form, about a child who was a year younger.

Two of them differ for an enormous number of reasons, and almost none of those reasons are visible on either page. Different writer. Different year group. Different house style. A child who moved rooms, or lost a friend, or had a growth spurt, or simply got a subject that suited them less.

You have been reading a difference as a direction, and a difference has never once come with its own explanation attached. Ecclesiastes 7:10 names the enquiry as unwise rather than the observation as false, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a change from a story about a change.

And here is the second cost, and it is the one that actually hurts.

A drawn trajectory does not stop at this year. That is the whole point of a line. Two points make a direction, and a direction extends, and within about four minutes a parent is looking at a page and seeing a fifteen year old.

That is not information. It is extrapolation, and it is being done by a frightened person at half past ten at night.

You are able to stop a line before it leaves the page, and no line drawn at half past ten has ever once been drawn by somebody qualified to draw it. The written word rules the question itself out of order, and the Spirit of God is the one who stops an extrapolation before it reaches a year that does not exist yet.

You were never reading about the future, and a summary of a year that has finished has never once said one word about a year that has not started. Ecclesiastes 7:10 removes the comparison as a method, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps a document inside its own dates.

Put one of them away

So here is the thing to do, and it is physical and it takes a minute.

Tonight, put last year's report away. Not on the table. Not in the same drawer as this year's.

Somewhere you would have to make a decision to go and get it. The loft, the back of a cupboard, a box under a bed. The point is that retrieving it should require an act rather than a reach.

Then read the one in front of you, on its own, once.

You have been given permission to read something once, and a document has never once yielded more on the fourth pass than it did on the first. Ecclesiastes 7:10 rules out the comparing enquiry as a method, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a single honest reading enough for a whole evening.

And if there is something in it worth asking about, write the question down, and ask a person. A person can tell you about a direction. A page cannot, and it was never built to.

That is the whole thing. One page, one reading, one question if there is one.

Ecclesiastes 7:10 names the comparing question as the unwise enquiry, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a house where somebody puts a folder somewhere awkward on purpose.

You are permitted to make a thing hard to reach, and putting something out of arm's length has never once been the same as hiding from it. The written word corrects the instrument rather than the concern, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a drawer gets chosen carefully.

You have one page to read tonight, and it has never once needed another one beside it to say what it says. Ecclesiastes 7:10 rules the comparison out as a method of enquiry, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a single reading enough.