This Month Last Year

You have both books open on the desk and you have been doing this every day for three weeks.

This month, last year. The same page, the same dates, the same columns, and the difference between them sitting there in your own handwriting where you cannot argue with it.

And you do it in the morning before anything else, and then again at the end of the day, and you have started doing it in your head at other times without the books in front of you, which is worse, because in your head the numbers get rounder and crueler.

Every single comparison is lost before you begin it. That is the design of the thing. Last year has already finished and has its total, and this month is not finished and cannot win, and you run the race again every morning anyway.

I am not going to tell you how to improve the month, because that would be strategy and there is none of it on this site. And I am not going to tell you it will come right, because I do not know. I am going to talk about one verse that forbids exactly this.

Say not, the former days were better

There is a sentence in Ecclesiastes that names this habit directly and calls it something, and the thing it calls it is not nostalgia.

The writer has been looking at how people think about time, and he gives a straight instruction about it.

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)

You are doing a thing Scripture names outright, and it has never once been a wise question. Ecclesiastes 7:10 forbids the asking of why the former days were better and calls the asking itself unwise rather than sinful, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a desk with two ledgers open side by side.

Notice what is being forbidden. Not remembering. Not gratitude for a good year. The specific question about why the former days were better, which is the question you ask every morning in two columns.

And notice the reason given, because it is not moral. Thou dost not enquire wisely. It is a bad question. It cannot produce an answer, and asking it will cost you something and return nothing.

You have been asking a question that cannot answer, and it has never once been able to. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an old instruction about the former days reach a man with a lamp on and two books open, and Ecclesiastes 7:10 calls the comparison unwise rather than wicked.

Why last year always wins

Let me say why the comparison cannot be won, because seeing the mechanism is most of the cure.

Last year is finished. It is one number and it includes the good weeks and you have forgotten the bad ones. This month is unfinished, and it is made of the days that have actually happened, and it carries every quiet Tuesday in full detail.

You were comparing a finished total with an unfinished one, and that has never once been a fair sum. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own arithmetic is made of, and the written word calls the question about the former days unwise in Ecclesiastes 7:10.

And there is something else, and it is the part that matters. Last year had quiet weeks too. You know that and you cannot feel it, because a year absorbs its own quiet and a month cannot. If you had sat at this desk last February comparing it to the February before, you would have had the same face on.

You probably did. Most men do. You just do not have the diary of how you felt.

You are not in a worse position than you were, and one unfinished month has never once been able to tell you where you stand. His Spirit is the one who takes a rigged comparison out of a man's hands, and Ecclesiastes 7:10 puts the whole question aside as a bad one rather than arguing with the numbers.

Close the book, say it, work

So here is the exercise, and it has three small parts.

Close last year's book and put it somewhere else. Not in the drawer of that desk, because the drawer of that desk is within reach. Another room.

You are able to put last year out of reach, and doing it has never once been pretending. Ecclesiastes 7:10 sets the question about the former days aside as unwise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one closed book possible this morning for a man who has opened it for three weeks.

Then say out loud, once, that last year is not this year. It sounds too simple to be worth doing. Say it anyway, because the comparison runs in your head and the only way to interrupt a thing that runs in your head is to put something audible across it.

Then do one ordinary piece of the work that nobody has asked for yet. Not something aimed at catching last year up. Just the work.

You were never going to be told anything by those two columns, and the work has never once been waiting on them. The Spirit of God carries a man out of a comparison he cannot win, and the written word names the question about the former days as an unwise enquiry in Ecclesiastes 7:10.