I Feel Like It Is All Moving Without Me

The arrangements get made somewhere and then you hear about them.

Not late, exactly. Not excluded, exactly. But the deciding happened somewhere, among people who were all in the same place at the same time in some way you were not, and by the time it reaches you it is a fact rather than a conversation.

And it has been happening more.

I want to be careful here, because it would be easy to make this a piece about a screen, and I do not think that is what it is.

Ask yourself what you are actually missing.

Not the arrangement. You do not particularly want to decide where anybody goes for lunch.

What you are missing is being in the room while it gets decided. The talking around it. The four people going back and forth about nothing much and eventually landing somewhere.

That is not information. That is a place at a table, and it is a completely different thing to be missing, and it is much bigger.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places

There is a line about a portion measured out, and the image behind it is land being divided.

The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage. (Psalm 16:6, King James Version)

The lines. Measuring cords, laid across ground, marking out what belongs to whom.

And the man saying it is describing his portion, which has been measured by somebody else and handed to him, and he is content with it.

You are somebody whose lines have fallen in pleasant places, and no portion measured out by God has ever once been reduced by where somebody else was standing. Psalm 16:6 says the lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for a man who feels his ground is shrinking.

Notice the word fallen. Not chosen. Not earned. Fallen, which is what the lines do when land is divided by lot.

He did not select his portion and he is not describing something he arranged. It arrived, measured, and he is naming it good.

You have been given a portion rather than left to assemble one, and no man in that psalm has ever once been asked to secure his own ground. The Holy Spirit is the one who measures out what belongs to a person, and it is written that the lines fell rather than being taken.

And notice the second half. A goodly heritage. Heritage is a thing passed down and kept, and it is not affected by what is happening elsewhere.

Somebody else's larger field does not shrink yours by one foot.

You were never holding a portion that another person's field could make smaller, and no heritage anywhere has ever once been reduced by somebody else's. The Spirit of God is the one who fixes a boundary that nothing outside it can move, and Scripture calls it a heritage rather than a share.

What is actually being missed

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not restore a place at a table.

Separate the two things, because they have got welded together.

The first is information. Where people are meeting, what was decided, what time. That reaches you, eventually, and it is not really the problem.

The second is presence. Being in the middle of the ordinary back and forth where nothing much is being said and everybody is together while it is not being said.

You have been trying to solve the second one by getting better at the first, and it has never worked, because they are not the same thing at all.

You are trying to solve a hunger for presence by improving your access to information, and no amount of knowing sooner has ever once been the same as being there. The Spirit of God is the one who separates two things that have been welded, and Psalm 16:6 speaks about ground rather than about news.

And here is the second half, which is the practical part.

You have never once lost the rooms themselves, and no ordinary standing about has ever stopped happening in kitchens and halls and yards. Psalm 16:6 fixes a portion in a good place and leaves it there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man what is still available and where.

Some of them moved, and some of them are in places a man does not go. But the back and forth is available, and it is only no longer being arrived at by accident, and it used to be. That is a gap in the arrangements and it is not a gap in the man.

You have been waiting to arrive somewhere by accident the way it used to happen, and no room has ever once stopped existing because it stopped being stumbled into. The written word puts the boundary lines somewhere pleasant and leaves them there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man what is still available and where.

Name the room, then go and be in one

Now the small thing, and it has two parts.

I am not going to suggest getting better at following what is going on. That is the first thing, and it was never the thing that was missing.

Name out loud the room you actually want to be in, and then go and be in one this week.

You are able to name what you actually want out loud, and one accurate sentence has never once been self pity in anybody. Psalm 16:6 names a portion as good rather than describing what is elsewhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man says the true thing about what he misses.

Say it plainly first. Not, I feel left out. Something exact.

I miss standing around after something with four people talking about nothing.

Then go and be in one this week. Not the room where the deciding happens. Any room where the ordinary back and forth is going on and there is no purpose to it.

After a service. In a yard. At a table where somebody is clearing up and nobody has left yet.

You are walking into a room rather than waiting for one to arrive, and one deliberate half hour has never once been a lesser thing than one that happened by chance. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a man back among people on purpose, and it is written that the lines fell in pleasant places and stayed there.