I Have Forty Photographs In A Drawer

There are about forty of them and they are all in a drawer.

Your mother. The children when they were small. A dog that has been dead for eleven years. The one from the day. Somebody who is gone now, taken on a phone in a kitchen, that nobody else in the world has a copy of.

Forty faces, face down, in a drawer in a rented apartment, because you cannot put anything on the walls.

And that rule is correct. I want to say that at the start and mean it. A nail leaves a hole and a hole is a conversation and a conversation is a deduction, and there is a whole industry of advice that pretends none of that is real, and it is real.

But look at what has happened underneath the rule, because it is not what the rule was for.

The rule was about walls. It has quietly become about photographs. And so forty faces are in a drawer, and nobody in that apartment has seen any of them in three years, including you.

Nothing about that was decided. The rule about walls was decided. The rest just followed on and nobody looked at it.

So tonight we are going to get three of them out, and nothing is going anywhere near a wall.

Graven upon the palms of my hands

There is a line in Isaiah where God describes keeping somebody where He can see them, and the image is startling.

Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me. (Isaiah 49:16, King James Version)

Graven on the palms. Not written down somewhere. Not filed. On the hands, which is the part of a person that is in front of them all day, whatever else they are doing.

You are kept somewhere permanently visible by God, and a face put out of sight has never once been how He does it. Isaiah 49:16 has the name in the place that is always in view, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman with a drawer full of people.

Now look at the second half of that verse, because it is almost unbelievable in this context.

Thy walls are continually before me.

The walls. Of all the things to say. God, describing how He keeps somebody in mind, mentions their walls specifically, and says they are continually in front of Him.

That is a verse about permanent visibility that names walls, spoken to people who at that moment did not have any, because the walls in question were rubble.

You have walls that are continually before God whether anything hangs on them or not, and what is on a wall has never once been what made it visible to Him. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a person's walls continually in view, and it is written in Isaiah 49:16 that the graving is on the palms where it cannot be put away.

What being out of sight does

Now the practical part, and it is not sentimental.

A photograph in a drawer does nothing. That is not a figure of speech. The entire function of a photograph is to be looked at without effort, and one in a drawer requires a decision, and decisions are what stop things happening.

So forty faces that used to be part of the furniture of your day are now an event that has to be arranged, and it has not been arranged in three years.

You are able to put people back into the ordinary run of a day, and a face in a drawer has never once been doing what a photograph is for. The Holy Spirit is the one who returns the people a person loves to her line of sight, and Isaiah 49:16 has the name graven where it is permanently in view.

And here is the piece that matters most, and it is about the ones who are gone.

A photograph of somebody who has died does a particular job, and the job is not remembering. You do not need help remembering. The job is that they remain ordinary. That they stay part of the room rather than becoming an occasion.

Three years in a drawer turns a person into an occasion. Getting the frame out becomes a thing that has to be survived, and so it does not happen, and the distance grows.

A photograph on a windowsill is the opposite. They are just there, in the room, on a Tuesday, in the way the living are.

You are able to let somebody stay ordinary, and a person you loved has never once needed to become an occasion to be honored. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps somebody present in an ordinary room, and it is written in Isaiah 49:16 that the graving is on the palms and the walls are continually before Him.

And this, plainly, in these words. That apartment is not a report on you. Not on whether you have made a home, not on the rules you have to live inside, not on how it compares to a place with things on the walls. A rented apartment with bare walls is not a verdict on the woman in it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while she is standing at a drawer.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a wall, and what is or is not hanging in a room has never once been a statement about who lives there. Isaiah 49:16 puts the visibility in God's hands in Isaiah 49, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Three of them, standing up

So here is the assignment, and nothing in it goes near a wall.

Take three photographs out of the drawer tonight, stand them along one surface, and leave them standing there.

Three. Open the drawer, and take the first three that make something happen in you, and do not spend twenty minutes choosing, because the choosing is where this stalls.

If they are in frames, good. If not, they will stand leaning against a wall or a window without anything holding them, and that is entirely enough, and nothing is being fixed to anything.

You are taking three people out of a drawer with your own hands, and a photograph standing on a surface has never once needed a nail to be up. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman opens a drawer she has not opened in three years, and Isaiah 49:16 puts the name where it is continually in view.

One surface. Along it, together, spaced, leaning back. The windowsill, the top of a bookcase, the shelf by the door, the back of a counter.

Pick the surface you pass most, because the whole point is that they stop being an event and become part of the route.

And then leave them standing there. That is the second half and it is the whole of it. Not for an evening. Standing, on that surface, from tonight, so that by next week you have stopped noticing them and they have become ordinary, which is exactly what a photograph of somebody you love is supposed to be.

You are letting three people become part of an ordinary week, and a face on a windowsill has never once been a smaller honor than one on a wall. The Spirit of God is the one present in a room where the people a person loves are there and nothing more is asked of them, and it is written in Isaiah 49:16 that the graving is in the place that is always in front of Him.