Forty-Three Drops and No Order

The handheld says forty-three drops and it does not say which one first, and that is the whole of the problem. Around him in the yard the other drivers are doing what drivers do at half six: coffees on the van roofs, somebody's radio, a joke about the new lad's parking, the loading bay shutter rattling up and the first cages coming out. Nobody is telling anybody anything. They scan, they load, they go, in whatever order suits them, and they seem to find that normal.

He does not find it normal. For nineteen years he worked in a place where a man called Frank told him what to do every minute of every shift, and Frank was not kind about it, and the place was not a good place, and he does not miss it. He wants to be clear about that, even to himself. He does not miss Frank. But he knew what every day was going to be. He knew where he would be standing at nine and at eleven and at three, and he knew what would be shouted and roughly when, and there was a terrible steadiness in that, and he had built a life inside it the way a man builds a life inside a small room, with everything in reach.

Now the place is closed and Frank is nowhere and he has a van and a handheld and forty-three drops that he can do in any order he likes, and he is standing in a yard full of people who are glad about the morning, holding a coffee going cold on the roof of the van, and the feeling that has come up in him is one he is ashamed of. He wants Frank back. Not Frank. The rota. He wants somebody to tell him which drop is first, so that the day has a shape that is not his to get wrong.

You know that yard. It may not be a van and it may not be nineteen years, but you know what it is to be out of a life that was terrible and at least predictable, and to find that the open is wider than you can hold, and to catch yourself wanting the walls back, and to hate yourself a little for wanting it. I am not going to mock that. It is one of the most honest things a free person ever feels. I want to read you what a free man said at the edge of the open, out loud, to God, and what God said back.

Do not bring us up from here

Let me name the weight before I lift anything, and let me name it without any contempt in it, because it deserves none. The old life had one gift, and it was the only gift it had: you never had to decide. Somebody else held the shape of the day, and however cruel the shape was, it was a shape, and a person can lean on a shape. Now nobody holds it. And so the open, which was supposed to be the good news, arrives instead as a very large room with no furniture in it, and the fear underneath is not really about the drops. It is that out here, with no one giving orders, you might be alone.

I read texts for a living, so let me read you one, and I want you to hear who is speaking and where he is standing.

And he said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." And he said to him, "If your presence will not go with me, do not bring us up from here."Exodus 33:14-15

That is Moses. He is at the mountain, and God has just told him to take the people up into the open land, and Moses says a thing that ought to be more famous than it is: if You do not go, do not bring us up. He would rather stay at the foot of the mountain than go into freedom without God's presence. He does not say that because he is weak. He says it because he understands what the open is. It is not the absence of walls. It is a place where the only steadiness is a Person, and if the Person is not coming, the open is only exposure.

Now look at the word. The Hebrew under presence in that verse is the ordinary word for face. My face will go with you. Not My rules. Not My rota. My face, turned toward you, ahead of you, in the wilderness where there is no path yet. That is what God offers a frightened man at the edge of the open. Not a schedule. Himself.

You are not out here on your own, and the open is not empty; His face goes ahead of the van. I am not offering that as encouragement. It is what is written to a man who was more afraid of freedom than of the mountain, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a written line true in a yard at half six. Freedom is not the absence of somebody giving orders. It is God's face going with you where the orders used to be.

Free is a settled word, and brave is a borrowed one

This site says one thing under everything else and I will say it plainly. Your freedom is not a thing to be worked toward. Paul writes that for freedom Christ has set us free (Galatians 5:1), and the Spirit who wrote that through him has not revised it. It is settled. The door was opened a long time ago and nothing about the yard this morning changes the status. What has not caught up is not the freedom. It is the walk. And the walk is frightening for the same reason it was frightening in Exodus: nobody in the wilderness had ever lived without a taskmaster, and it took them a while to learn that daily bread was not the same as no bread.

That is worth saying, because Israel said the thing you are ashamed of, out loud, in front of everybody. Would that we had died in Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots (Exodus 16:3). They wanted the walls back. They said so. And read what God did next. He did not send them back, and He did not lecture them for the longing. He sent bread, every morning, enough for the day, and He kept sending it. He answered the fear of the open with His own faithfulness in it, one day at a time.

You have His company in the open, not a map of it, and the company is better. Scripture says His presence goes; it does not say His timetable goes. And it is His Spirit who is out here with a person, in the van, at the first drop, whichever drop it is, and He has not asked you to know the order before you turn the key.

I want to be careful, because I know how this can be misheard. I am not saying the longing is wrong and I am not saying wanting the old shape back is a betrayal of anything. Moses wanted a guarantee before he went and God gave him one, and the guarantee was not a route. It was a face. You may want the rota back and be a free man in the same breath. What you may not do is let the wanting choose your route, because it will always choose the walls, and the walls are gone, and there is Someone standing where they were.

There is one more thing in Exodus 33 that a free person needs. Moses does not stop at do not bring us up. He goes on: how shall it be known that I have found favor, I and Your people? Is it not in Your going with us? The mark of a free people, in his mouth, is not that they know where they are going. It is that God is going with them. That is the whole difference between the wilderness and Egypt. Egypt had a plan for every hour and no God in it. The wilderness had no plan and God's face ahead of it every step.

You are free, and brave is not something you have to bring; it is what His going with you produces in a person over time. It is written that He goes ahead, and the Holy Spirit is the courage in the cab, not your grip on the wheel. You do not have to feel brave to pull out of the yard. You have to know who is going.