Four People Took Him On And Four People Moved On

The first one was in his twenties and lasted longest, about four months, and that one ended because the man's wife got ill and everything in that house went sideways, which is a real reason and he has never held it against anybody.

The second was a Thursday breakfast thing that ran seven or eight weeks and then just did not get rearranged.

The third was the one that hurt. That man had said the word year out loud. He had said, give me a year with you, and he had meant it on the day, and there were five very good sessions and then the sixth got moved twice and then a Sunday came where they saw each other across a room and both did the small nod that means we should sort that out, and neither of them ever did.

The fourth was two years ago. Six weeks.

None of them are bad men. He wants that on the record because it matters to him. Every one of them had a real reason, and two of them still ask after him warmly when they see him, and one sent a message at Christmas.

But four is four.

And what has happened, without any decision being taken, is that he now has a private timetable. When somebody new suggests something like it, he agrees, and he means it, and somewhere underneath he has already marked week six.

He has caught himself doing it twice. Not consciously deciding it. Just noticing, at about session four, that he has stopped bringing the real thing, and that he is telling anecdotes now instead, the good ones, the ones that go down well.

He is protecting a man who has not done anything yet.

And under the whole of it there is a conclusion he has never said out loud in these words: there is something in me that people can manage for about six weeks, and then whatever it is arrives, and they go.

He is fifty-four. He has been a Christian for thirty-one years. And he has never once been accompanied through an ordinary week.

And you have a number. Two, or three, or four. People who meant it, and did not stay, and you have quietly begun to treat the pattern as a finding about yourself.

Searched out, and acquainted with every ordinary movement

There is a psalm that gets read at people constantly and the part that actually matters here is the least quoted line in it.

You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways.Psalm 139:3

Look at what is being described. Not a moment of crisis. Not a mountaintop.

My path, which is where a man goes in a day. My lying down, which is the most ordinary thing a human being does and the one that nobody but a person's own household ever witnesses.

And the word acquainted, which is not the language of an inspection. It is the language of familiarity. Somebody who is acquainted with your ways knows how you take your coffee and what you are like on a Monday.

You have been accompanied through every ordinary week of thirty-one years by Somebody who is acquainted with your ways. It is written that You search out my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways (Psalm 139:3), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a felt presence in a yard at first light rather than a doctrine about omniscience.

Now the conclusion you have never said out loud, and it deserves to be met head on.

There is something in me that people can manage for about six weeks.

Look at what your own account actually contains. A wife who got ill. A breakfast that did not get rearranged. A man who moved twice and then a nod across a room. A fourth one two years ago.

Four different causes. Not one of them is you, and you know the details of each because you have gone over them, and if you laid them out for a stranger they would see four ordinary ways that things end between busy people.

You have been reading a pattern into four unrelated endings, and there is no thread in them and you have never found one. Scripture says the heart is deceitful above all things (Jeremiah 17:9), which is exactly the mechanism at work when a man's own mind assembles a case against him out of nothing, and it is the Holy Spirit who tells a person the truth about themselves rather than leaving them with their own summary.

And the anecdotes at session four, which is the part that is currently costing you.

You stop bringing the real thing and you start bringing the good stories. That is not dishonesty. It is a man who has been put down four times, protecting himself in advance, and it is completely understandable and it is also the thing that guarantees nobody ever gets past week six.

Nobody can accompany a set of anecdotes. There is nothing to walk alongside.

You are permitted to bring the real thing, and the guarding you built after the third one is not keeping anybody, it is keeping everybody at the distance it was designed for. It is written that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18), and it is the Holy Spirit who does that casting out, which is why a man can stop guarding without first getting a guarantee about anybody.

And now the thing this page will not say to you.

It is not going to tell you to go and find somebody. That instruction gets handed to lonely people constantly and it is a bill they cannot pay, and a man who has been put down four times does not need a fifth arrangement to organize.

What is being said is smaller and much older. There has been Somebody in the truck the whole time. Through the four months and the seven weeks and the year that did not happen, and through all the ordinary weeks in between when nobody was scheduled to see you at all.

You have never once been unaccompanied, including in every stretch that had nobody in it. Scripture says I am with you always, to the end of the age (Matthew 28:20), and it is His Spirit who is the way that presence is actually delivered to a man on a Tuesday, which is not a metaphor and never was.