The Two Pieces in the Drawer

There is a drawer in that bedroom, second one down, the one that sticks. Inside it, under a folded jumper, is a thing that was one thing this morning and is two things now.

Nobody knows about the drawer except him.

It happened around four o'clock. It was quick, the way these things are, and it was over before he had finished understanding that it had begun. Then there was a long moment in an empty hall with a small sound still in his ears, and a decision arrived that a six year old is not equipped for, and he made the one that six year olds nearly always make.

He put it in the drawer.

Then he had his tea. Then he had a bath and did not want the water deep. Then somebody read him two chapters and he asked no questions about either of them, which was the first thing anybody noticed.

Now the lamp is off and the drawer is four feet away, closed.

He is not lying there thinking about the thing. He is thinking about the drawer, and the morning, and the moment somebody opens it, and how that moment goes, and then he starts the whole film again from the beginning. Children rehearse. They run it and run it, and they never once run a version where it turns out fine.

His mother comes back upstairs, because something about how those two chapters went did not sit right with her. She sits on the edge of the bed. She does not know about the drawer. She has no idea what she is dealing with and she can feel perfectly well that she is dealing with something.

If that is your bed and your evening, this is written for you. And here is the mercy in it: the part that matters tonight does not require finding out what is in the drawer.

What is keeping him awake is not the thing

It is the rehearsal.

The thing itself took four seconds. The rehearsal has been running for five hours and it has no ending, because the ending is the bit he cannot write. Every version stops at the same place: the drawer opens, and then a blank, and a blank is far worse than a consequence. A consequence can be survived. A blank goes on all night.

So the ache in that bed is not guilt exactly. It is suspense. And the only thing that ends suspense is somebody saying how it actually goes.

You are not managing a small criminal tonight. Psalm 32:5 says that the moment it was finally said out loud, the guilt of it was forgiven, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land in a child, not the tone you happen to use while saying it.

I told You what I did and I did not hide it. I said I would tell the Lord about my wrong, and You forgave it.Psalm 32:5

Read the order of it, because the order is the whole gift. Telling came first. Forgiveness came immediately after. There is no interval in that verse where the man stands there working up an adequate amount of sorrow before anything is granted him. He said it. It was forgiven. That is the entire sequence.

Which means nobody in that bed has to feel sorry enough. That is worth saying plainly, because a child will absolutely invent that requirement if nobody removes it, and then set about trying to feel it, and then feel guilty about not feeling it properly.

You have already forgiven this, whatever it turns out to be, and the difficulty is that he cannot feel it yet. Scripture says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off your voice and into a small chest.

Telling is the door, and it is not a frightening one

Everything in this message points one direction, and it points there gently. Toward telling.

Nothing here asks a child to hold something on his own. Nothing here suggests keeping it. A child who learns tonight that the hard thing can be said out loud and the roof stays on has learned something that will matter far more, years from now, about something far bigger than a drawer.

So make the telling small and make it certain. Not tonight, unless it comes tonight. In the morning. And say what happens when it comes, in advance, so the blank in his rehearsal gets filled in before he goes to sleep.

Here is the sentence to have ready, and the first one out of your mouth when it finally comes: thank you for telling me.

Not, why did you not say. Not, how long has this been in there. Thank you for telling me, first, before anything else gets sorted out, because a child who is thanked for telling will tell you the next thing too, and the next thing may matter a great deal more than this one.

You were not asked to extract a confession out of anybody tonight. Isaiah 43:25 says God blots wrongs out and does not keep them in mind, and the Holy Spirit is not standing over that bed waiting for a better quality of sorry.

And then the word that does the actual work. Finished. Not forgiven in principle, not sorted out later, not held over until somebody has had a think about it. Finished, and not going to be brought up again. Say that part on purpose, because the fear underneath a quiet child is almost never punishment. It is that the reckoning has merely been postponed.

You have a morning coming, and it is a good place to put this. The written word says His mercies are new every single morning, and the Holy Spirit is already standing in that conversation before either of you has walked into it.