It has moved about four feet in three years. Behind the door, then beside the shoe rack, then back behind the door when somebody was coming.
It is not a good case. It is the second one he ever owned and there is a sticker on it he stopped being able to explain about a decade ago.
Inside is a guitar he has not touched since a Friday night in the November, and if he is honest with himself, and he is not often, he could not tell you what condition it is in. Whether it has held. Whether the neck has done what necks do in a hallway with a radiator.
What happened that night is known to about forty people and most of them have forgotten it. He knows they have forgotten it, in the reasonable part of his head, and the reasonable part of his head is not the part that walks past the case.
It ended badly. Not one big thing. A build up of six months and then a night where something was said in front of everybody, by him, and something was said back, and a room went quiet in the specific way a room goes quiet.
Three years. He walks past it several times a day and he has developed a way of not seeing it that is, at this point, quite skilled.
The sentence, on the rare occasions he lets it finish, is not I miss playing. It is: whatever that was in me, it came out badly in front of people, and it is safer in the case.
You know that case. It might be an instrument, or a pen, or a room full of people, or a way you used to be. The thing that ended badly is closed up somewhere in your house, and you have got skilled at not seeing it.
The clause people leave off
There is a verse that everybody knows the first half of, and the second half is the one for a man in a hallway.
The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way.Psalm 37:23
And He delights in his way. That is the clause. Not tolerates. Not permits, provided the man performs. God is described as taking pleasure in the road a man is on.
And read the verse immediately after it, because the pair is the point: though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down, for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. The falling is in the passage. It is not a surprise to anybody. It sits right beside the delight, in the same breath, unbothered.
You are a man whose steps are ordered and whose way God delights in, and the delight has never once been withdrawn over a bad November. That is what the written word says over you and not a soft framing chosen for a man who is good at not seeing something, and the Holy Spirit who is with you in that hallway is the evidence that nothing about you was closed up with the guitar.
Watch what that does to the arithmetic on the way past. If the steps are ordered and He delights in the way, then a Friday night in November is information about six months of build up and a room that went quiet. It is not the last word on what your hands do, and it never had the standing to become that.
Nobody here is telling you to open it
Here is the second thing, and it is the one thing this page will not do.
There is a version of this article that ends with you kneeling down in a hallway and opening a case. It is a good scene. It would read well. And it would be a demand, and it would send you past that case for another three years with something extra on your back.
So: nothing here is telling you to open it. Not tonight, not ever. If that case stays shut until somebody clears the house, nothing has been failed, and His Spirit has not withheld one thing from anybody.
And nothing here promises that if you did open it, it would go well this time. Nobody knows. It might be badly out of tune and it might sound like nothing and you might close it again in four minutes, and a page that promised otherwise would be one more voice adding to the weight.
You have been carried through every one of the three years, and the carrying was never contingent on you playing anything. Scripture says He works all things after the counsel of His own will, and it is the Holy Spirit at work in you rather than waiting in a hallway for a lid to come up.
And the forty people. Most of them have forgotten. The ones who have not are carrying their own version of that night and it is not the version you think.
This is where your mouth comes into it, because I am not leaving you with a warm thought and a closed case. Jesus taught that the smallest living faith a man has, spoken out loud at the thing in the way, is enough for God to work with. Spoken. Not walked past several times a day for three years. And the thing in the way is not the room and it is not what was said back. It is a sentence: it is safer in the case. Nobody has ever answered that out loud, and you least of all.
You have real authority to answer it, and it is yours because you are in Christ, not because you feel like a man with any authority standing in his own hallway. Scripture hands you the standing and the Holy Spirit carries the words, and the power was never in whether you play again.
If this has taken you somewhere darker than regret, and there are hours when you would rather not be here at all, tell a living person today. Your doctor, or a crisis line, 988 in the United States, 116 123 in the United Kingdom, or the emergency number where you live. That is not a detour from what God is doing with your life. Very often it is exactly what He is doing, arriving down a telephone.
So. The hallway, the case behind the door, the sticker you cannot explain.
Put one hand flat on the lid. Not the catches. Actually do it, palm on the top of a closed case, on the way past, which is the only way you ever go past it.
Say out loud what ended. Plain words, the flattest in the house. Say the month.
Then say one sentence naming who orders the steps. Not what you are going to do about the guitar, because nothing here is asking you to open anything, and God has never required a man to pick something back up in order to have his way delighted in. Just who orders them. One sentence, then take your hand off and carry on down the hall.
You are not a man who is safer with the lid down, you are a man whose steps are ordered by God and whose way He delights in, standing in a hallway with his hand on a case. That is the word's account of these three years rather than my comfortable version of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has walked past that case with you every single time.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these out loud with your hand still on the lid. You stand in Christ, and Scripture is what makes these words a declaration rather than a wish, and the Holy Spirit carries them rather than however you feel about that November. What God does next with your life, and whether that case is ever opened, is His to decide, and He is not asking you to open it and neither is this page.
- Case by the door, you are not the last word on what I do with my hands. The psalm says the steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord and He delights in his way, and you are a lid and a sticker I cannot explain.
- Sentence that says it is safer in the case, you have no place in my mouth, and I put you out in the name of Jesus. Scripture puts the falling in the very next verse beside the delight and does not treat it as a surprise, so one November did not withdraw anything.
- Lord, You order my steps and You delight in my way, and I am standing on that in this hallway with one hand flat on a closed lid. I thank You, because Your Spirit has walked past this case with me every single time for three years, and I am going down the hall without a verdict.
Psalm 37:23
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