The Note He Left On The Door

It was not a long note.

Four lines, in his own hand, on a piece of card, pinned to the front door with a drawing pin at each corner because it was going to be windy.

It said where he would be. It said why. It said, if you are reading this and wondering, then please read the other side, and on the other side he had written out something he wanted them to have.

He was not being dramatic. If you knew him you would know he is about the least dramatic man on that lane. He simply believed a specific thing was going to happen, and he had thought about the neighbors, and he had decided that leaving a note was the kind thing.

He went out at half six the next morning and took it down himself.

Not because anybody had said anything. It had been up about eighteen hours and the whole lane had walked past it and not one person mentioned it then and nobody has mentioned it since.

He took the pins out one at a time. He remembers that. Four pins, and putting them back in the tin in the drawer, and then standing in his own hall with a piece of card in his hand and not knowing what to do with it.

It is still in that drawer. He has never thrown it away and he could not tell you why not.

If you have taken something down yourself the morning after, come and stand out here a minute. Nobody is going to ask you what was on it.

He goes before, and the sentence does not have conditions in it

There is a line said to a man about to lead people into something enormous, and it is worth reading for what is missing from it.

And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.Deuteronomy 31:8

Look for the conditions. There are none. No if, no provided that, nothing about getting it right.

It is not addressed to somebody who has just been correct about something. It is addressed to somebody standing in front of a thing he does not know how to do, and the promise is about presence and about not being left, which are the two things a man on a doorstep at half six most needs and least believes.

You were not left in that hall with a piece of card in your hand. Deuteronomy 31:8 makes the not forsaking unconditional, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the Helper for precisely the hours nobody else knows about, which means the eighteen hours and the four pins happened in company you could not see.

The timing was wrong. That is not the same as the faith.

Now the distinction, and I am going to make it plainly because the soft version of it insults a man.

Your timing was wrong. That is a fact. You put a date on something and the date came and went, and no amount of careful language changes it, and you would stop reading if I tried.

But there were two things in that note and only one of them failed.

The date failed. The thing on the other side of the card did not. You wrote out something you wanted your neighbors to have, and it was true when you wrote it and it is true now, and nothing that happened on that Tuesday touched a word of it.

You are still holding what you were actually holding, and it is not a schedule. 2 Timothy 1:12 has a man saying I know whom I have believed, with a Person as the object rather than a plan, and it is His Spirit who keeps that fastened in somebody whose plan has just come apart in public, which means the collapse did not reach the foundation.

And I am not going to tell you why it did not happen. Nobody knows. Anybody offering a reason from a distance is guessing about your life and will not be standing on that lane afterwards.

One more thing, said plainly, because you have wondered about it every day since. Nobody on that lane thinks less of you. They have not mentioned it because they do not know what to say, and silence from neighbors is almost never a verdict. It is usually just silence.

You have not been written off by anybody, and you are not carrying a debt to that lane. Romans 14:4 asks who are you to judge another man's servant, since to his own master he stands or falls, and it is the Holy Spirit who actually holds a servant up, which means the only verdict that decides anything about you was never theirs to give.