The Guitar Is Under The Bed In Its Case

It is under the bed on the far side, where you would have to lie down on the floor to reach it.

Hard case. Two catches, and one of them was always stiff. Inside there is a guitar with old strings on it and a pick wedged under them, and the last time your hands were on it, the world was a different shape.

Three chords. That is what you got. G, and C, and the one that hurt, which was F, and you never did get the F clean.

And then something happened. It usually does. A job that ate the evenings, or a baby, or a move, or just the slow business of a life filling up. The guitar went under the bed for a while, and the while turned into a long time, and now you do not think of it as a guitar under a bed. You think of it as a thing you gave up.

I want to tell you something plain, because I am plain, and because I have known a lot of men out on the road who carry exactly this and would rather chew glass than mention it.

You did not give it up. You put it down.

There is a world of difference between those two, and the difference is the whole of tonight. Giving up is a decision. You never made a decision. You had one long busy stretch and the guitar was not in it, and then the not being in it got old enough to look like a verdict.

And I will say the other part too. Part of what keeps that case shut is knowing that if you open it, your hands will not remember, and then it is properly gone. So you leave it. Leaving it keeps the maybe alive. I understand it. I have done it with other things.

Stir up what is already in you

Paul writes to a young man named Timothy who has gone quiet.

Timothy is not a rebel. He is tired and he is frightened, and whatever fire he had has banked down to about nothing. And Paul does not tell him to go and get something new. Read what he says.

Wherefore I put thee in remembrance that thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. (2 Timothy 1:6, King James Version)

Stir up. It is the word for poking a fire that has gone down to coals. And it is the word that tells you what Paul thought was under the ash, which was fire, not nothing.

Which is in thee. Present tense, in a man who had gone quiet long enough for somebody to write him a letter about it.

You have not lost what went quiet, and 2 Timothy 1:6 is written to a man in exactly that condition rather than to a man who was doing well. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an old letter to a frightened young preacher and lays it down on a hard case under a bed.

I am not going to dress this up. Paul did not say Timothy would be brilliant. He said stir up what is in you. That is a smaller word and a truer one.

You are being spoken to about coals rather than about ashes, and it is already settled in the written word that the gift is in thee. His Spirit is the one who says present tense over a man who has been thinking in past tense for eleven years.

Do not go and get a new one

Here is where the well meaning advice goes wrong, and it has probably been offered to you.

Somebody says get a new guitar. Nice one. Start fresh, take a lesson, do it properly this time. And that sounds like kindness, and it is, and it will not work, because the story you carry is not about equipment. The story says a man who starts things and stops them. A new guitar cannot touch that story. It just puts a second one in the house.

Paul did not send Timothy off to be re-gifted. He sent him back to the thing that was already in him.

You were given something that has not been withdrawn, and this is yours to stir rather than to replace. Scripture says the gift is in thee, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes going back possible for a man who only knows how to begin again.

And do not go learning a fourth chord tonight either. Play the three you have. G, and C, and the F that never came clean, and let the F be terrible, because it was terrible in the first place and that never stopped you before.

You are able to sit down and play three chords badly, and heaven has never once asked you for a fourth. It is written that Timothy was told to stir up what he had, not to acquire what he did not, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding that distinction steady while you open the catches.

Ten minutes on the floor of a bedroom

So here is the whole of what I am asking, and I am not going to make it bigger while your back is turned.

Get down on the floor tonight and pull that case out. Open both catches. The stiff one still sticks. Take it out, sit on the edge of the bed, and play for ten minutes.

The strings are dead. Let them be dead. Do not put new ones on first, because putting new ones on first is how a man spends an evening on a guitar without playing one. It goes badly out of tune within a minute. Tune it roughly and carry on.

Your fingertips will hurt in about four minutes. That is not a sign of anything. That is skin.

You have a God who is present on a bedroom floor at half past nine, and 2 Timothy 1:6 is not too grand a verse to say so. The written word puts the gift inside a man and the Spirit of God puts Himself in the room with him, and neither of those waits for the playing to be any good.