I Keep It Because It Was A Good Day

There is a ticket stub in a jar in your kitchen.

It is from a concert about eleven years ago. The paper has gone soft and the print has mostly faded and if you handed it to somebody they would not be able to read what it said.

You know exactly what it says.

It was the best night of that year. There were four of you and it rained on the way and none of you cared, and you have told that story maybe twice ever, and the stub is in the jar.

Somebody in your life thinks the jar is funny. Not unkindly. They have a gentle joke about it that has been running for years, about what will be in there next.

And the joke has worked on you, slowly, over a long time. You laugh at it. And you have also started, quietly, to feel a bit foolish about the jar, and to wonder whether a grown woman keeping a faded ticket is a slightly sad thing.

I want to go straight at that, because there is a whole practice in scripture that your jar belongs to, and it is not a soft one.

Remembering on purpose, with objects, is a discipline of faith. It is not nostalgia and it is not a weakness of character, and there is a psalmist doing it in the middle of the worst night of his life.

I will remember the works of the LORD

There is a psalm written by somebody in genuine trouble, and what he does in the middle of it is a technique.

I will remember the works of the LORD: surely I will remember thy wonders of old. (Psalm 77:11, King James Version)

That is not a man drifting into a happy memory. That is a decision, stated twice, in the future tense, as something he is going to make himself do.

He is in the dark and he is deliberately going back over the record of good things. Not because he feels like it. Because it is what you do, and he knows it is what you do, and the psalm records the doing of it.

You are keeping a record of works that were done for you, and keeping that record has never once been a soft thing. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has started to feel foolish about a jar, and Psalm 77:11 makes remembering a deliberate act taken in trouble.

And notice that he needs material to do it with.

He goes to his own history and pulls out specifics. A psalmist has a nation's history to work from. You have a ticket stub, which is the same tool at domestic scale, and the tool is only useful if it was kept.

You have material to remember with because you kept it, and the keeping has never once been the frivolous part. The written word makes remembrance a practice that requires a record, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who can still hear a concert through a faded stub.

What the joke costs

Here is what the gentle joke has been doing, and the person making it has no idea.

A joke about a jar teaches you, one small repetition at a time, that the contents of the jar are a category of thing that is faintly ridiculous. Nobody argued you into that. It arrived by laughter, which is much harder to argue back against.

You were taught something by repetition and never by argument, and a thing taught that way has never once been more true for it. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has laughed along with something that was quietly costing her, and Psalm 77:11 treats deliberate remembering as strength in hard weather.

And the cost shows up at a specific moment.

It shows up on a bad evening, when the exact thing you need is a concrete piece of evidence that good days are real and happened to you. On that evening, the jar is the psalmist's tool. And a woman who half believes the jar is silly will not go to it.

You are holding a tool built for a bad evening, and that tool has never once been decoration. The written word records a man in trouble reaching for the works of God on purpose, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been shamed out of her own best equipment.

Saying the reason out loud

So tonight is small. Pick up one thing you kept and say out loud why.

The ticket, or whatever your version is. One sentence, in the room, in your own voice.

You are able to say the reason out loud without a joke attached, and the reason has never once needed defending. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman holding a soft piece of paper in a kitchen, and Psalm 77:11 states its intention twice and apologizes to nobody.

And here is why the out loud part matters, given the joke.

The joke has had a hundred repetitions and your own reason has had none. That is the whole imbalance. One spoken sentence in your own voice begins to even it up, and it costs you nothing and no object moves.

You are giving your own voice a turn on a subject it has never once had one on, and your voice has never once been the least qualified in the room. The written word lets a man state his remembering as a plain decision, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman speaking about a concert eleven years old.