A Stranger Walked Through Yesterday

He was there about forty minutes and he was perfectly pleasant.

He shook your hand. He said a couple of things about the weather. And then he walked through nine years of your life looking at the ceiling and the floor.

Not at anything you have done. At the ceiling. At the floor. At a corner where the wall meets the boards. At the frame of the back door for slightly longer than the rest.

He wrote things down. Not many. He asked you two questions and both of them were about the building.

Then he shook your hand again and went.

And you have not been able to put it down since.

Here is what has been sitting on you, and it is not that somebody looked.

Somebody walked through the whole of it and did not see any of it.

He did not see the winter with the road closed. He did not see the corner where the young one who could not look anybody in the eye stood for the first three weeks. He walked past the door frame of the room where you told a woman she still had her job and he looked at the hinges.

Nine years, and forty minutes, and a man looking at a ceiling.

There is a verse about whose hand a life is held in, and it changes what that forty minutes actually was.

My times are in thy hand

David says something short in the middle of a hard psalm.

But I trusted in thee, O LORD: I said, Thou art my God. My times are in thy hand. (Psalm 31:15, King James Version)

My times are in thy hand. Not my time. My times, plural.

That is a phrase about the stretches of a life. The seasons, the years, the particular winters. All of them, held in a hand.

You have nine years that are held in a hand rather than assessed in forty minutes, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding them. Psalm 31:15 says my times are in thy hand, and He was holding them all the way through the winter the road was closed.

Now what that does to the man with the notebook.

He was not assessing your nine years. He genuinely was not. He was looking at a building, because that is his job, and a building is what he is qualified to look at.

The nine years were never in front of him. They were never available to him. He could not have seen them if he had stayed a week.

You were not being weighed by anybody yesterday, and it is written that the times are in God's hand rather than in anybody's notebook. The Spirit of God is the one holding the part that was not on show, and Psalm 31 puts it somewhere no survey reaches.

And here is the thing that will take the sting out entirely.

What he could not see is not hidden. It is not lost and it is not unrecorded. It is held.

Held is different from unseen. A thing held in a hand is not waiting for somebody to notice it; it is already accounted for by the one holding it.

You have nine years that are already accounted for rather than nine years waiting to be recognized, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been holding them. Scripture puts the times in a hand rather than on a page, and Psalm 31:15 is where the holding is stated.

What you are actually grieving

Let me name it, because it is not the visit and it is not the man.

The grief is that there is no way to show anybody. Not him, not anybody. No document contains the winter the road was closed, and no forty minute walk-through anywhere is ever going to reach it.

And a person who has given nine years to something wants it to be seeable. That is not vanity. That is ordinary and it is human and everybody who has ever built anything has wanted it.

You are not being vain by wanting it seen, and the written word puts the times in a hand rather than telling anybody they should not mind. The Spirit of God is the one who put that wanting in a person, and Psalm 31 does not correct anybody for it.

And there is one thing available that is not being seen by somebody else.

You can walk it yourself. On your own, on purpose, the same route he took, looking at what he could not see.

That is not a consolation prize. It is the only kind of looking that could ever have reached those nine years, because it requires somebody who was there.

You are the only person who could ever have done that walk properly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who goes with you on it. It is written that the times are held rather than displayed, and Psalm 31:15 is why what you see is real rather than sentimental.

Walk the same route

So here is the thing to do, and it takes about twenty minutes, and it is on your own.

Walk the same route he walked. In at the front, through, and out the back, the same way. And at each place, look at what he could not see: the corner, the door frame, the spot where the water came in that February.

Say them out loud if you can. One sentence each. This is where the young one stood for three weeks.

You are looking at what is actually there rather than at what got written down, and Psalm 31:15 says my times are in thy hand. The Spirit of God is the one walking it with you, and He was present at every one of those places.

The reason it has to be out loud and at each place is that a general sense that a lot happened is exactly what a forty minute survey flattens.

Named, place by place, standing in the actual spot, it becomes what it is: nine years of specific things in specific corners, held in a hand, and not one of them was ever available to a man with a notebook.

You have nine years of specific things rather than a general stretch, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has held every one of them. The written word holds all the times of a life in one hand, and Psalm 31:15 is where they are kept.

Then open in the morning and go on running the place the way you run it.