I Know Them All And Not Which Goes Where

You can say six of them right now.

Straight out, no hesitation, in order if somebody asked. Your memory has not lost one of them.

What you cannot do is say which one belongs to which thing.

So you stand in front of something and go through them. First one, no. Second one, no. Third one, and you are in. Four attempts, sometimes two, and it takes a couple of minutes, and then it is done.

And somewhere in the last year you started drawing a conclusion from that, and the conclusion is a large one.

You have begun to think this is the start of something.

I want to look very carefully at that, because it deserves a proper answer rather than a comforting one, and because a man who has quietly decided that his mind is going carries that around every hour of every day and usually tells nobody.

Here is the plain shape of it, and it will not be a comfort, it will be an argument. A man who could not remember them would not be able to recite six. What you have is not a memory problem. It is a filing problem, and they are two different things entirely.

Cast me not off in the time of old age

There is a prayer about growing older, and the honest thing about it is that it is a prayer of fear.

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. (Psalm 71:9, King James Version)

That is a man afraid. He is not pretending otherwise and Scripture did not tidy him up.

He says the words strength faileth out loud, in a prayer, in a book that was meant to be sung by everybody.

You are in company with a man who said the fear out loud in a psalm, and no honest fear about growing older has ever once been hidden from God to make it acceptable. Psalm 71:9 says cast me not off in the time of old age, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes room for a fear rather than requiring it to be denied.

Now notice what he asks for. He does not ask for his strength back. He does not ask to be young. He asks not to be cast off and not to be forsaken.

The request is about the relationship rather than about the capacity, and that is a very old man's wisdom in one line.

You have a prayer available that does not require anything to be reversed, and no man has ever once had to get his capacity back in order to keep his place. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person's place regardless of what changes, and it is written that the plea is about being kept rather than being restored.

And there is the shape of the whole psalm around it, which is worth knowing. It is written by somebody looking back over a long life and forward at what is coming.

He remembers, in detail, at length. It is a psalm full of recollection, written by a man afraid of decline, and both of those are true on the same page.

You were never required to choose between remembering well and being afraid, and no man has ever once had to settle one of those before the other was allowed to be true. The Spirit of God is the one who lets two true things stand together, and Scripture puts the recollection and the fear side by side without resolving either.

A filing problem and a memory problem

Now let me be concrete, because this deserves an argument rather than a reassurance.

Memory is holding the thing. Filing is knowing where it goes. They use different parts of a person and they fail for completely different reasons.

Six items are being held perfectly. Every one of them intact, retrievable on demand, no hesitation. That is memory working.

What is missing is the label on each one saying which door it opens. That label is not something you forgot. It is something that was never attached.

You have six things held perfectly and nothing forgotten at all, and a missing label has never once been the same thing as a lost item. The Spirit of God is the one who tells two different things apart when a man has welded them together, and Psalm 71:9 asks to be kept rather than to be restored.

And here is why the label was never attached. Nobody ever attached labels to these. There was no moment where anybody said, write down which one goes where.

They accumulated over fifteen years, one at a time, each in a hurry, each in a different year, with no system because nobody was ever given one. That is a gap in the teaching, and it is not a gap in you.

You were never handed a system and never once shown one, and something nobody taught has never been evidence about the person who was not taught it. The written word makes the request about being kept rather than about capacity, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates what a man was never given from what he cannot do.

Say the six, and name the trouble

Now the small thing, and it is two pieces.

I am not going to hand over a filing system. That may be worth doing and it is a separate afternoon, and today is about the conclusion that has been drawn rather than about the drawer.

Say out loud the six you can recite. Then say out loud that the trouble is which door and not which word.

You are able to speak six things out loud that a failing memory could not produce, and reciting what you actually hold has never once been vanity in anybody. Psalm 71:9 has a man saying his fear plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in a room while a man tests his own conclusion.

Say the six first. Out loud, at a normal volume, on your own. Take your time.

Then say the second sentence. The trouble is which door, not which word.

Because you have been running an argument against yourself for a year with only one side of the evidence in the room. Saying the six out loud puts the other side in, and the other side is very strong, and it has never once been heard.

You are putting the missing evidence into an argument that has only ever heard one side, and six things said out loud have never once been the performance of a failing mind. The Spirit of God is the one who brings the other half of the evidence into a room, and it is written that a man may say his fear plainly and still be kept.