You Envied A Man Who Just Came And Ate

It was a wedding, and he was not working it.

That is the part he keeps going back to. Nobody had asked him to do anything. He was not on the sheet. He was a cousin of a cousin, sitting at the far end of the long table with a plate in front of him, and for the first time in about nine years he was in a room full of people who did not know what he did.

And four seats down there was a man of about fifty in a good shirt, who arrived at seven, ate everything put in front of him, laughed at things that were not funny, kissed the bride's mother on both cheeks, and left at half past ten.

That is the whole of it. That is the entire account of what that man did.

And something came up in him at that table that he has not been able to put back down since.

He wanted it. Not the shirt and not the evening. He wanted to be a man who arrives somewhere and is not needed there. He wanted to walk into a building and have nobody's eyes find him and change. He wanted to eat a meal all the way through while it was still hot, and to leave when he was ready rather than when the last conversation released him.

He wanted, for one evening, to be a guest.

He got in the car at eleven and sat in it in the dark for a while before he started it, because he had gone from wanting that to something much worse in about four minutes, and the worse thing was this: if that is what I want, what am I still doing?

And by the time he was on the main road he had built a case, and he was the only one arguing it, and he lost.

He has not said one word of this to anybody. Who would he say it to? Everyone he would ordinarily tell is somebody he is also carrying.

So it sits where those things sit, and it has had four months to grow, and it has grown, because a thought fed on nothing but your own voice always does.

Now that is you in the car park at eleven o'clock, and you have known it was you since the second paragraph.

Nothing is going to be argued at you here

Let me say plainly what is not about to happen, because you are braced for both of them.

Nobody here is going to talk you into staying. Not with encouragement, not with guilt, not with a story about a man who nearly walked away and weeps with gratitude now. And nobody here is going to tell you to go. That is not mine to hand you, I do not know your house or your years, and both of those are only different ways of making a very tired man carry a decision tonight.

There is no decision on this page. Set it down for twenty minutes. It will keep.

There is nothing to do here either. No practice to sharpen, nothing to get up earlier for, no discipline to add. You are running on empty, and a suggestion is the last thing empty needs.

What I want to take off you is one specific weight: the idea that what you wanted at that table has finished you.

You are not disqualified by what came up in you at that wedding, and heaven has not opened a file on it. It is written that God knows our frame and remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14), and remembers is a tender word there, not a disappointed one. It is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who takes that sentence and lays it over a man sitting in a dark car park with the engine off.

Now come and look at somebody who was told this out loud, by his father-in-law, in front of his own tent.

There was a man carrying a whole nation on his own. He sat from morning until evening and the people stood around him all day, and he did it because he was the one who could, and because there was nobody else, and because it was genuinely his to do.

And an old man watched him do it for one day and said this:

You and the people with you will certainly wear yourselves out, for the thing is too heavy for you. You are not able to do it alone. Exodus 18:18 The Holy Spirit is what turns a sentence that is true into a sentence that is true about you.

Read it slowly, because it is not a rebuke and it is not a strategy.

It is an observation, made kindly, by somebody who loved him, and it was made out loud before anything else was said. The weight was genuinely more than one man. That was simply true, and God let it be said in His own book, and did not correct it afterwards.

God has never once required you to be a man who does not get tired, and He is not surprised to find that you are one. The record is full of it. A prophet sat down under a tree and asked to die and was given bread and sleep (1 Kings 19:5-6). A psalmist wrote down that he wanted wings so he could fly away and be at rest (Psalm 55:6), and God put that sentence in the songbook of His own people rather than out of it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes those land on a man in a car rather than sit quietly in a chapter.

And there is one more thing about that wedding, and it is the thing you have not let yourself see.

You did not envy that man's life. You have no idea what his life is. You envied one evening of it, and specifically the part of the evening where nothing was required of him.

Wanting a room where nothing is required of you is not a betrayal of your calling. It is a description of the thing Jesus offered. He said, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28), and the words He chose for the people He was speaking to were labor and heavy laden, which is what you are. His Spirit is what turns that from a verse on a wall into a chair pulled out at a table.

He did it for His own, too. When they came back from being sent out, having done exactly what they were sent to do, and the crowds kept coming so that they had no leisure even to eat, He did not commend them for pushing through. He said, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while (Mark 6:31).

He took them away from the work. He said it first. Nobody had to ask.

And I need to say this next part plainly, because it matters more than anything else on this page. If any of this has traveled further than tiredness, if you have found yourself thinking that the people around you would manage better without you in the world at all, please tell a human being tonight. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour. Anywhere else, your local crisis line or emergency number, and one person who knows your name and can sit with you until morning. Being the man who always answers the phone does not disqualify you from picking one up.

You are not condemned for what you wanted at that table, and the court that has been sitting in your car for four months has no standing. It is written that there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and now is the word in it, not later and not when you have sorted yourself out. The Holy Spirit is the one who reads a verdict like that into a man's own kitchen.