The Boxes Came From The Old House

The tape has gone yellow.

That is how you know how long it has been. Three moves, and on two of them a removal man asked you what was in them and you said things from the old house, and on the third one nobody asked.

There are four of them. Your handwriting on the side, from when you were about thirty, in a marker that has faded on one of them to the point where you cannot read what it says.

And you have never opened one. Not in any of the three houses. They have gone from a garage to a garage to this room, and the tape is the original tape.

Here is the thing you have started saying to yourself lately.

That if you have not needed anything in them in that long, there cannot be anything worth keeping, and therefore the sensible thing is obvious, and therefore not doing the sensible thing must mean something about you.

That is an argument, and it sounds airtight, and I want to show you what it leaves out.

It assumes the only reason to keep a box is that you might need what is in it. And that has never once been the only reason people keep things, and scripture has a whole category for the other one.

Put them in a vessel to last many days

There is an extraordinary moment in Jeremiah where a man buys a field he will never see, during a siege, and then gives an instruction about the paperwork.

Take these evidences ... both which is sealed, and this evidence which is open; and put them in an earthen vessel, that they may continue many days. (Jeremiah 32:14, King James Version)

Put them in a vessel that they may continue many days. That is a deliberate, instructed, long term keeping of something with no immediate use.

The city was about to fall. Nobody was going to need those deeds for a very long time, and he knew it, and the instruction is to preserve them anyway because the keeping itself is the act of faith.

You are keeping something sealed on purpose, and sealed has never once been the same as forgotten. Jeremiah 32:14 instructs a long keeping of documents nobody could use, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man looking at yellowed tape and his own handwriting.

And notice the phrase many days.

He does not say until the siege lifts. He does not give a date. Many days is an open ended commitment to holding something, written into the instruction, with no review point.

You are inside an open ended keeping, and no such keeping has ever once required a justification at the end of it. The written word seals evidences into a jar for an unspecified length of time, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has moved four boxes through three houses.

What the airtight argument leaves out

So let me go at the argument, because it needs answering rather than dismissing.

Twenty years without needing something says a good deal. That half of it is true. Nobody is going to want whatever is in box three.

What the argument leaves out is that need was never the reason. You did not tape those boxes up at thirty because you anticipated a requirement. You taped them because leaving a house with everything in it was more than you could do that week, and you were right about that.

You were doing the only possible thing in a week you could not carry, and no box packed that way has ever once been a failure to decide. Jeremiah 32:14 preserves something for reasons that have nothing to do with use, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land for a man who has been arguing with himself using the wrong premise.

And here is what those boxes actually are now.

They are a sealed piece of a house that does not exist. Whatever is inside, the boxes themselves are the last intact thing from that address, and unopened they stay that way, and opened they become a pile of objects in a room in a different city.

Some part of you knows that, and that is the real reason the tape has never come off, and it is a much better reason than the one you have been giving yourself.

You have a better reason than the one you have been using, and the tape has never once stayed on out of avoidance. The written word seals up evidences precisely so that they continue, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man who has just found the actual answer to his own question.

Two minutes, and the tape stays on

So here is today, and there is nothing sharp involved.

Walk into the room. Stay for two minutes. Leave without moving anything.

The boxes stay sealed. Nothing is opened, nothing is lifted, nothing is read.

You are standing with them and opening nothing, and standing there has never once been the first cut of a knife. Jeremiah 32:14 puts the sealed and the open evidence together in one jar and leaves both, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man standing in front of four taped boxes.

And here is what the two minutes is for.

Right now those boxes are something to walk past. Two minutes of standing in front of them makes them something stood in front of, which is a different relationship and costs nothing and requires no knife.

They can stay sealed for another twenty years after that, and the instruction in Jeremiah would still be on your side.

You are able to stand with them for twenty more years, and many days has never once come with a deadline attached. The written word commits to an open ended keeping without a review point, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land for a man who has stopped arguing with himself in his own garage.