The Index Card In My Pocket

You wrote them yourself. That was unusual then and you were quietly proud of it.

Four lines on a white index card, in blue pen, folded once, in the inside pocket of the jacket. You took it out and read it and your hand was not steady.

Then the day happened, and the jacket went to the cleaners, and at some point in the next decade the card stopped existing.

You did not notice for years. Then you went looking for it, once, in a box, for no reason you could explain to your wife. And it was not there. And you have looked twice more since.

Here is what I think is actually going on, and I say it gently. Somewhere in you, the card is the promise. Not a record of it. The thing itself. And its absence feels like the promise has gone thin.

That is a completely reasonable way for a man to feel and it is not true, and I want to spend twenty minutes showing you why.

Somebody keeps better records than you do

There is a line in Psalm 56 that I have carried around for years, and the reason I love it is that it is so ridiculously specific.

thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book? (Psalm 56:8, King James Version)

Look at what is being claimed. A count of a man's wanderings. His tears in a container. A book with the whole thing written in it.

That is not poetry about God being generally aware. It is a claim about record keeping so detailed it is almost funny, and it was written by a man on the run who had lost nearly everything he owned.

You are recorded in a book that no house move can reach, and Psalm 56 has never once put the keeping of a man's life in the man's own pocket. Psalm 56:8 has the wanderings counted and the tears kept and the whole of it written down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on somebody who lost a card.

Notice that he asks it as a question. Are they not in thy book. He is reassuring himself out loud with something he already believes, which is exactly what I am asking you to do this morning.

You have permission to ask it out loud the way he did, and the word has never once treated that kind of asking as unbelief. The passage puts a man's own question about God's records right into the text, and the Spirit of God is the one who answers it in a kitchen forty years later.

Paper was always the copy

Here is the distinction, and I want to be plain because plainness is what does the work here.

The card was never the promise. The card was a script for your mouth. The promise happened when the words left you and landed on her, in front of witnesses, in front of God.

Paper is a copy. It always was. If the card had survived and you had it in a frame in the hall, the promise would not be one gram heavier than it is this morning.

You have a promise that was never stored in the object, and Psalm 56 has never once put a man's account in his own belongings. Psalm 56:8 keeps the wanderings counted and the tears kept and the book written by somebody else entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the custody off a man.

I know that is easy to say and hard to feel. So let me put it the other way round, which is how it got through to me.

If the card were the promise, then whoever finds it in a landfill owns your marriage. Which is absurd. And the absurdity is the proof.

You are holding something that was never made of paper, and God has never once filed a vow in a place a man could lose it. Psalm 56:8 keeps the record in His own book rather than in the man's belongings, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person put down the search for an object.

You have kept the four lines for thirty years in the only way anybody ever keeps a promise, and it has never once been by holding on to the paper. It is written that God tells a man's wanderings and keeps his tears, and the Spirit of God is the one who does that same keeping with a vow.

Say what is left, and do not reconstruct

So here is what to do, and there is one rule and it matters.

Alone, out loud, to God, say your vows from whatever is left in your memory.

The rule is: do not reconstruct. Do not sit there trying to piece the four lines back together. Do not write a new card.

It is written that God tells a man's wanderings and keeps the whole account in His own book, and the Spirit of God is the one who receives an honest fragment. You are permitted to arrive with two lines out of four, and it has never once been your job to restore the document.

Say what comes. If it is two of the four lines, say two. If it is a fragment and then a gap, say the fragment and let the gap be a gap.

Then say this, out loud: the rest of it is in Your book.

You are handing the missing part to the one who has it written down, and it has never once been your job to restore the document. Psalm 56:8 asks are they not in thy book, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a man says the same question in his own kitchen.

That last sentence is the whole of it. Everything else is warm up.