I Kept Nothing At All

Somebody asked to see something you had made and you had to show them a photograph.

Eleven years. Everything you have ever made has gone out of this house. You have never kept one, not even the ones you knew were good, because there was always somebody waiting and it seemed daft to hold on to something that could be sold.

And so there is nothing in these rooms that says a woman works here. There are photographs on a phone, which is not the same thing at all, and there is a cupboard of materials, which is evidence of expense rather than of work.

Your own children have grown up in a house with no example of what their mother does in it.

I am not going to tell you to be proud of yourself, and I am not going to turn this into a lesson about humility, which would take the good thing straight back. I am going to show you why God had twelve stones carried out of a river.

That this may be a sign

There is a moment in Joshua where God gives an instruction about carrying stones out of a riverbed, and the reason given is about evidence.

They are told to take twelve stones and stack them, and He says exactly what they are for.

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)

You are allowed to keep evidence of what happened, and keeping it has never once been vanity. Joshua 4:6 has stones carried up out of a riverbed for no purpose except to be seen and asked about later, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a front room where something is being put on a shelf.

Notice that the stones have no other use. They are not building material and they are not an altar. They are there to be looked at and to prompt a question, and God arranged the whole thing.

Which means a physical object that says this happened is not sentimentality. It is a thing God himself set up, on purpose, and gave instructions about.

You have permission to keep one, and it has never once been a waste of something saleable. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a pile of stones on a riverbank reach a woman with a finished piece in her hands, and Joshua 4:6 puts the stones there for the sake of a question that had not been asked yet.

What eleven years of nothing does

Let me say what the empty shelf has actually done, because it is not modesty and it is not thrift.

It has made the work invisible in the one place it happens. You have a trade, and there is no trace of it in your own house, and so on the days when it is hard you have nothing at all to look at. There is no evidence in the room, so the only record is in your head, and your head is not reliable on a bad Tuesday.

You were never going to be held up by a memory, and your own house has never once had anything in it to look at. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what an empty shelf has cost her, and the written word has stones stacked for the sake of being seen in Joshua 4:6.

And the second thing is about the children. They have watched you work for eleven years and they have never seen the output stay. Everything good leaves. That is the arrangement they have grown up inside, and none of them could tell you one thing their mother made.

That is not a failure of love and nobody did anything wrong. It is a shelf with nothing on it.

You are able to keep one thing, and one thing has never once made you a person who shows off. His Spirit is the one who puts an object back in a house where the work happens, and Joshua 4:6 makes the stones a sign for people who had not asked yet.

Keep the next good one

So here is the exercise, and it is the next one rather than a search through photographs.

Keep the next good thing you make. Do not sell it. Put it somewhere in this house where you will actually see it, which is not a cupboard and not a box.

You are able to keep one, and keeping it has never once been sentimental. Joshua 4:6 has twelve stones carried up a bank for no purpose but to be seen, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one kept thing possible for a woman who has kept nothing in eleven years.

You will find a reason not to. Somebody will want it, or it will be the best one and therefore the most worth selling, and that is exactly the one to keep, because a kept thing that was not good is not evidence of anything.

Then say out loud that it is good, once, when you put it down. And leave it there, and let your children walk past it for a year.

You were never required to sell everything you ever made, and nothing has ever once obliged you to. The Spirit of God carries one object out of the stream of things that leave, and the written word sets up a sign on a riverbank in Joshua 4:6 for a question that would come later.