My List Outlived My Strength

Look at the handwriting.

It is yours, and it is not quite the handwriting you have now, and that is worth noticing before you look at anything actually written on the page.

That list was made by a woman who could do a full day. Who could carry things up stairs without planning it. Who could kneel down and get up again without the getting up being a separate event.

She was a good woman and she made a sensible list, and every item on it was within her reach on the day she wrote it.

And the list has not been revised since. It has been carried and re-copied and added to, and never once measured against the body that is actually available now.

So every week a woman sits down with a page written by somebody with more in her arms, and measures herself against it, and comes up short, and does that in private.

You are a woman with a list from another decade, and a page written by a younger pair of hands has never once been a page you are held to.

When I am old and grayheaded

There is a request in the seventy first psalm that is unusual because of who is making it and what they are willing to say about themselves.

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation. (Psalm 71:18, King James Version)

Now also when I am old and grayheaded.

He says it plainly. Old. Grayheaded. There is no softening in there and no apology for the fact, and he is not asking to be young again anywhere in that sentence.

And the request is made from inside the age rather than in spite of it. Forsake me not, he says, as an old man, about being an old man, and the age is stated as the setting rather than as the problem.

You have a psalm that names the age plainly and asks from inside it, and being older has never once had to be argued with before anything could be asked for. Psalm 71:18 states the grayheadedness as a fact, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that honesty a comfortable place to stand.

And then look at what he asks to be able to do. Until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation.

Shewed. Told, demonstrated, made known. It is not an athletic request. He is not asking for his strength back, he is asking to be able to show God strength, which is an entirely different thing and is available to somebody who cannot get up off a floor easily.

You were never asking for a younger body in order to be useful, and what that verse asks for has never once required the strength it once had. The Spirit of God is the one whose strength is being shown, and the written word asks to shew His rather than to recover anybody else.

A list is a document and documents get revised

So here is the practical claim, and it is administrative rather than emotional.

A list is a document. It was written at a particular time, by a particular person, in particular circumstances. Every document like that eventually stops matching the situation it was written for, and the ordinary response is to revise it.

Nobody thinks a revised document is a defeat. Nobody feels ashamed of updating an address book.

You have a document rather than a covenant, and a page written eleven years ago has never once been a thing anybody signed. Psalm 71:18 speaks plainly from inside a changed condition, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a revision an ordinary act.

And here is why this particular document never gets revised, and it is not stubbornness.

Revising it means writing down, in your own hand, that some things are no longer available. And that is a harder act than it looks, because the page becomes a record of a change that nobody wants to record.

So the old list stays, and it is easier to fail against it every week than to write the true one down once.

You have been paying weekly to avoid writing one page, and a true list has never once cost more than the failing against a false one. The Spirit of God is the one present while a woman writes something down that she would rather not, and Psalm 71:18 names the grayheadedness rather than working around it.

And one more, and it is what makes the new page bearable. It is not a shorter list of smaller things.

You have work that belongs to this year and is not a lesser version of anything, and a thing done at the pace available has never once been a smaller thing. Psalm 71:18 asks to show a strength that is not the writer own, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that the same size of work it always was.

Write the list for this year

Here is the assignment and it is about forty minutes with a cup of tea.

Write a new list of the things that belong to this year.

Not the old list shortened. A new page. Start from the house as it is and the hands as they are and write what belongs to the woman who is here now.

You have a page available tonight that has never once been written, and a list made for the year you are in has never once been a smaller list than the old one. Psalm 71:18 speaks from inside the present condition, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that table while a new page gets made.

You have things that will not go on the new page, and leaving something off on purpose has never once been the same as losing it by accident. That is the difficult part and it is the whole point, and it is better done at a table than accidentally every week for another decade. Psalm 71:18 speaks from inside the present condition, and the Spirit of God is the one at that table while it happens.

Some things will go on it that were never on the old one, because the old one was written by somebody who had different priorities and did not know what this year would be about.

Then put the old list in a drawer. Do not throw it away, because throwing it away makes it a bigger event than it is, and do not read it again before it goes in.

Just fold it and put it away and shut the drawer.