Anything But That One

Rob would give you anything in that house, and everybody who knows him knows it, and there is one thing.

He is not a tight man. That is worth establishing before anything else, because otherwise you will read this as a message about a mean person and it is not. Rob is the one who turns up with the van. He has lent tools he never got back and did not chase, he has put people up, he has covered things for people quietly, and he does not talk about any of it.

There is one thing.

And here is the part that got him: he did not have to think. Somebody asked him a general question about generosity, at a table, in a completely harmless conversation, and the thing arrived in him fully formed and instantly, with a small physical sensation somewhere under the ribs, before the sentence had even finished.

He did not say anything. He said something else. And he thought about it for a fortnight.

Because it is not the largest thing he owns. He knows that. He could name three things worth considerably more that he would hand over without a flicker, and he has, and it never cost him a night's sleep. If it were a matter of value the thing would not even be in the top ten.

It is not about value. It has never been about value.

What he could not work out, for that fortnight, was what it was about, and he got there eventually in an ordinary way, standing in his own hallway holding a box for somebody else who was moving.

He thought: I am not holding it. I am holding what it means.

And what it means is a whole set of things at once, none of which he had ever said out loud: a year that went a particular way, a person who is not here any more, a version of himself that he has not been for a long time and is not ready to stop being.

The object is a handle. He has been holding the handle for eleven years and calling it the thing.

You have your own. You knew what it was two paragraphs ago, before I had described anybody, and you knew it in the same way Rob did, which is instantly and slightly physically, and it is very probably not the biggest thing you have.

Nobody is asking you for it. Let me say that now and say it plainly, and I will say it again before we finish. Nothing on this page wants your thing. This site does not take anything from anybody, there is no ask coming at the end of this, and if there were you should shut the page and never come back.

Something has just been held for a long time, and it is worth knowing what your hand is actually round.

The look came before the sentence

There is an encounter everybody remembers for the wrong line, and the line before it is the one that matters.

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest.Mark 10:21

Beholding him loved him. That is the sequence. He looked at the man properly, and He loved him, and then He named the one thing, and He named it out of the love and not out of anything else.

That is not how any of us hears it. We hear the demand and we brace, and the bracing is so automatic that most people have never noticed the clause at the front of the verse in their lives.

And now hear what is already true over you, because this is the whole ground of it. You are looked at and loved, in that order, before anything is named. That is not my softening: the written word puts the loving first in the sentence and the naming second, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that land in a man standing in a hallway holding somebody else's box.

And nothing about your standing is under review here. The word says there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ, and it is the Spirit who bears witness with your spirit that this is settled, which means the one thing is not a test you are currently failing.

Nobody is asking you for anything

Now I am going to be as plain as I know how to be, because this is where a message like this turns into a collection, and if it does that it has become the exact thing this whole site exists to refuse.

Nobody here wants your one thing. Not this site, not me, not anybody connected to any of it. Nothing is being asked of you at the end of this article. There is no appeal, there is nothing gated behind a payment, and there never will be. A message that opens a person's hand and then points at a plate has done something genuinely wicked, and it is done constantly, and it is the reason a great many people flinch when a church talks about anything at all.

So put that down. There is no plate.

And I am not going to tell you what your one thing should be, or that you have to let go of it, or that God is waiting for you to hand it over before He will move. I do not know what it is. He does, and He has never once needed my help to raise a subject.

And nobody is telling you that having things is the problem. That man in Mark went away sad and Jesus did not chase him with a lecture about wealth being evil. Wealth is not evil. A tool is not a rival. The trouble was never the amount, in that story or in yours.

And the one thing does not have a claim on you. That is worth hearing clearly: the word says you were bought with a price, so you are not the property of anything you own, and it is the Spirit who makes that felt rather than merely reasoned.

What the grip is actually round

Here is the part I would want said to me.

The reason it is not the largest thing is that it was never really the thing. Objects do not generate that feeling under the ribs. Meanings do.

So the question worth sitting with tonight is not should I let go of it. That question arrives too early and it makes everybody defensive, and it is not the question anybody in Scripture is ever asked first.

The question is: what is it holding for me?

Because that is answerable, and it is answerable alone, and nobody has to be told the answer.

And whatever it is holding, He is already able to hold instead. Not once you release it: the word says He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him, and able is the operative word there rather than willing, and the Spirit is the one who makes that a place to set something down rather than a doctrine about safekeeping.