They All Left In September And I Stayed

It happened over about four days.

Wednesday there were people. By the following Monday the town had a different number in it, and the pub on a Thursday was a completely different place, and the group message went from about forty messages a day to about six.

And you got up on the Monday and went to work.

That was six weeks ago and the strange part is not the loneliness, which you expected. The strange part is that your life has become invisible.

They post things. Photographs of rooms, of people you do not know, of nights out, of a corridor with a caption on it. And you look at all of it, and you are pleased for them, genuinely, and you have nothing whatsoever to put beside it.

Because what happened in your week is that you worked four shifts, one of which was difficult, and you got quite good at something you could not do in August, and you had a very funny conversation with a woman called Denise on Thursday.

None of that photographs. All of it is real.

Here is what I want to say at the start. Your life is not less than theirs. It is less visible than theirs, and those are two entirely different things that have been getting confused since about the second week.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do

There is a line in Ecclesiastes that is unusually blunt about work.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. (Ecclesiastes 9:10, King James Version)

Whatsoever thy hand findeth.

Not: whatsoever you planned. Not: whatsoever you chose out of a set of options at eighteen. Whatsoever is found by a hand, which is a description of the ordinary way most work actually arrives in a life.

And the instruction attached to it is not modest. Do it with thy might.

You are doing the thing that was found and doing it fully, and work that arrived rather than being selected has never once been a lesser kind of work. The Holy Spirit is the one in a town that emptied out over four days in September, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 attaches the whole of a person's might to whatever their hand found.

And notice what is absent from that verse.

There is no audience anywhere in it. No mention of who sees the work, or what it looks like, or how it compares. The whole sentence is between a person, their hand, and the thing in front of it.

Which is the exact opposite of a life measured by what can be posted.

You have a verse with no audience anywhere in it, and work that nobody photographs has never once been work that nobody counted. The written word puts the might and the finding together with no observer, and the Spirit of God is the one who counts a Tuesday that produced no images.

Visible and less are not the same

Now the practical part, and it is the confusion that has been running since the second week.

Their year is extremely photogenic. That is a fact about the format rather than about the content.

New rooms, new people, constant novelty, a built in supply of things that look like something. A person in that situation generates images without trying, and the images are true, and they are also a very partial account. Nobody is posting the four hours in a room with nobody, and everybody has those.

Your year generates almost nothing visible and a considerable amount of substance. Four shifts, a skill you did not have in August, money you earned, a woman called Denise.

You are producing substance rather than images, and a life that photographs badly has never once been a life that is going badly. Ecclesiastes 9:10 measures the might and never once measures the visibility, and the Holy Spirit is the one who values a Tuesday accurately.

And here is what the invisibility is actually costing, which is not what it looks like.

It has made you quiet.

That is the real damage. Because there is nothing to post, nothing gets supplied at all, and so in the group message there is now a person who reacts rather than a person who says things. Six weeks of that quietly makes somebody a smaller presence in their own friendships, and none of it was decided.

Staying is not a verdict on anybody.

You are able to stop shrinking in a conversation that is still yours, and having nothing to post has never once been the same as having nothing to say. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a quiet that started because a format changed, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 puts the work between a person and their own hand without any reference to an audience.

Tell one of them one specific thing

So here is the thing to do, and the second half of it is what makes it work.

Tell one person who left one specific thing that happened in your week. Without asking them anything about theirs.

One specific thing. Not how it is going. Not a summary. The actual thing: what Denise said on Thursday. The shift that went wrong. The thing you can do now that you could not do in August.

You are able to put a real Tuesday into a conversation, and one specific thing from an ordinary week has never once been less interesting than a photograph of a corridor. It is written in Ecclesiastes 9:10 that whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when somebody sends the actual contents of a week.

And do not ask about theirs. That is the discipline and it will feel rude.

It is not rude. It is the correction of an imbalance that has been running since September, in which one person supplies material and the other one asks questions about it, and the asking has become the entire contribution.

They will ask you things. They will ask you far more once there is something specific to ask about, and specific things are the only thing anybody can actually ask about.

You are able to supply rather than only receive, and six weeks of asking questions have never once been the same as being in a friendship. Scripture puts the doing and the might together and never mentions anybody watching, and the same Spirit who left the audience out is with you when you send it.