There is a mark on the wood, about the size of a thumbnail, and he puts his thumb on it most Sundays without thinking about it.
It is not from anything. A hymn book corner, probably, years ago. It is simply the mark that happens to be at the end of the pew where he sits, and it has become the thing his hand does while the service starts.
That seat was in the middle of it once. Not the front, never the front, but in the room, in the years, when the whole building was warm and something was plainly going on and nobody had to be told to come.
That was a long time ago now. The room is a good room. People are kind, the preaching is honest, and a great many faithful things happen in it every week that nobody would call extraordinary.
And what he has been doing, for longer than he realized, is looking after the memory. Keeping it accurate. Correcting people gently when they get a detail wrong. Putting his thumb on a mark that is not even from anything.
He has not asked for anything in that room in about six years. He has only been curating.
If you have been tending a memory, come and sit on the grass. Nothing about that building or the people in it is going to be run down here.
Curating and asking are different activities
Let us name what he has been doing, because it looks like faithfulness and it is not quite that.
Curating protects a thing that already happened. It is careful, it is respectful, it corrects errors, and it is aimed backwards. He has been good at it and it has cost him nothing, because a memory does not disappoint anybody.
Asking is aimed forwards and it is exposed, because the thing asked for may not arrive, and the person asking has to stand in a room afterward with nothing having visibly happened.
Somewhere in the last six years the first quietly replaced the second, and nobody noticed, including him, because from the outside they look identical.
You have not been faithful in the way you thought. Nothing about six years of tending a memory has ever been the same as asking. I am not saying that to accuse a man who stayed. Scripture says stir up the gift of God, which is in thee (2 Timothy 1:6), which is an instruction aimed at something present rather than at something remembered, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it hold in a man with his thumb on a mark.
Stir up what is in thee, present tense
Here is the part that turned this for me, and it takes nothing off the years he is remembering.
Read where that instruction points, because it does not point where a man tending a season would expect.
Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands.2 Timothy 1:6
Which is in thee. Present tense, stated flatly, about a man who plainly needed reminding. The gift is not described as having been in him during a better season. It is described as in him now, at the point of the letter.
And stir up is a verb about a fire that is presently laid. You do not stir up a fire you are remembering. The instruction assumes there are coals in the grate at the moment it is given.
There are coals in the grate now, and Scripture puts the gift in the present tense while it tells you to stir it. That is written into the verse itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who brings it to a man six years into curating.
Nothing here is against those years or this room
Something must be said plainly, or this becomes a page that treats a real season as a distraction.
Those years happened. They were not overstated, the warmth in that building was real, and the people who remember them are not living in the past by mentioning them twice a year. Correcting a detail is not a fault either. It came from care.
And the room as it is now is not a lesser room. Kind people, honest preaching, and a great many faithful things that nobody calls extraordinary and that hold a congregation together for decades.
You are asking for this again, here. The fire that stayed is the one you want, not the one you remember. Scripture says how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him (Luke 11:13), where the gift is named as a Person and the asking is open to whoever will make it, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not a season, who is the object of the request.
And if these six years have cost more than the people on that grass know, if sleep has gone, if Sunday has started to weigh on you, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a promise that anything comes to that building, or when.
You are asking for this again, here. The fire that stayed is the one you want, not the one you remember. Scripture says stir up the gift of God which is in thee (2 Timothy 1:6), where the gift is present tense and the verb assumes coals rather than ashes, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a season you have been keeping accurate, who is the object of the asking.
I cannot tell you what happens in that room, or when, or whether it ever looks like it did. Nobody honest would, and a promise here would turn you back into a curator with a better catalogue. What I can tell you is that six years of remembering carefully has not been six years of asking, and that the two can start again on the same Sunday.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing under these words is His rather than your own. You speak under His will and not yours, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers.
- Years of tending a memory, you are care I gave to the wrong thing and you are not what God asked of me. Second Timothy 1 says stir up the gift of God which is in thee, present tense, to a man who plainly needed reminding, and the Holy Spirit put that instruction on something present rather than on something remembered. In the name of Jesus I take you off my Sundays.
- Habit of curating instead of asking, you are not what God says about me and you are not sitting in that pew on Sunday. Luke 11 names the gift as the Holy Spirit and opens the asking to whoever will make it, so no season was ever the object of it, and His Spirit is the one being asked for. I am asking for this again, here.
- Father, Second Timothy 1 says stir up the gift of God which is in thee, and the verb assumes coals in the grate rather than ashes on a shelf. I thank You for years that were real and were never overstated and for a room of kind people holding a congregation together with things nobody calls extraordinary, and Your Spirit is the one I am asking for and not a season. The fire that stayed is the one I want, not the one I remember.
2 Timothy 1:6
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