Eleven Years And I Still Call It Temporary

You have been in that place eleven years and you still describe it as temporary.

Not to yourself, particularly. To other people. It comes up in conversation and there is a phrase that arrives with it. For now. Until something else comes up. It is not permanent.

Eleven years. Two of your neighbors have moved in and out twice in that time. The man in the shop knows your order. You know which floorboard does it and which window sticks and what the street sounds like at three in the morning in every season of the year.

That is not a stopgap. That is a life, conducted in a specific place, for over a decade.

And I am not raising this to catch you out. I am raising it because of what the phrase costs, and the cost is quiet and it has been running the whole eleven years.

If a place is temporary, nothing in it is worth doing. That is not a decision, it is arithmetic, and it runs automatically. Eleven years of automatic arithmetic produces a place a man has lived in for a decade without ever once settling into it.

Tonight we are going to say one sentence out loud, and then put one thing somewhere.

The Lord hath made room for us

There is a moment in Genesis where a man who has been moved on repeatedly finally names a place, and the name is the point.

And he removed from thence, and digged another well; and for that they strove not: and he called the name of it Rehoboth; and he said, For now the LORD hath made room for us, and we shall be fruitful in the land. (Genesis 26:22, King James Version)

Rehoboth means room. Space. Somewhere wide enough to be in.

You are somebody God has made room for, and a place a man has lived in for eleven years has never once been outside what that verse is describing. Genesis 26:22 has a man name a place and say the Lord made room for him there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man who has been been calling it temporary for eleven years.

Now look at the history behind that verse, because it is exactly the shape of yours.

Isaac had been moved on twice already. Two wells, two disputes, two departures. He had every reason to treat the third one as another stopover and to keep his attachment to it minimal, because that is what a sensible man does after twice.

And instead he names it. He says out loud that God has made room here, and he says we shall be fruitful in the land, which is a sentence about the future in a place.

You have permission to name where you are, and being moved on before has never once been a reason to refuse to say where a man lives now. The Spirit of God is the one who makes room for people in actual places, and it is written in Genesis 26:22 that Isaac named the third one out loud.

What the phrase is protecting

Now let me be fair to the phrase, because it is doing a job and it deserves credit before it goes.

It is protecting you from a particular disappointment. If this place is temporary, then it not being what you wanted does not count. It is not the real answer. The real one is still ahead, and nothing here has to be reckoned with.

That is a genuinely useful piece of equipment and it has got you through eleven years.

You have been carrying something that has done real work, and a phrase that protects a man has never once been a foolish thing to have picked up. The Holy Spirit is the one who is fair about why a thing was built, and Genesis 26:22 has a man name a place only after two that did not hold.

But the cost is enormous and it is all in one place.

Eleven years is a large part of a life. And a large part of your life has been conducted in a place you were officially not in, which means the eleven years are hard to feel, hard to remember, and hard to count as living. Not because they were bad. Because they were classified as a waiting room the entire time they were happening.

You are able to give eleven years back to yourself with one sentence, and a decade has never once been a waiting room except by classification. The Spirit of God is the one who returns a stretch of life to a man, and it is written in Genesis 26:22 that a man said out loud where God had made room for him.

And this, plainly, in these words. That place is not a report on you. Not on your earning, not on your ambition, not on how far along you were meant to be by now. A rented place a man has been in for eleven years is not a verdict on the man, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in his own kitchen.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from an address, and how long somebody has rented has never once been a statement about who they are. Genesis 26:22 has God make room for a man in a place in Genesis 26, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Say it, then put one thing down

So here is the assignment, and it is a sentence and an object.

Say out loud once tonight that you live here, and then put one thing you own where you will see it every morning.

The sentence first. Out loud, standing in the kitchen, to nobody. I live here.

Three words. It will feel ridiculous and it will also be harder to say than it looks, and both of those are normal, and the fact that it is hard is the whole reason it is worth doing.

You are able to say a true thing that has been difficult for eleven years, and a hard sentence has never once been a sign that a man should not say it. The Holy Spirit is the one present in a kitchen for both attempts at three words, and Genesis 26:22 has a man name a place out loud after two that did not hold.

Not I have lived here eleven years, which is a fact about the past. I live here. Present tense, in your own kitchen, out loud.

You are able to say three words out loud in your own kitchen, and a sentence spoken to nobody has never once been a smaller thing than one said in front of somebody. The Holy Spirit is the one present when a man says a true thing with no audience, and Genesis 26:22 has Isaac name a place out loud after two that did not last.

Then the object.

One thing you own, put where you will see it every morning. On the counter, on the shelf by the door, wherever your route already goes before eight.

Standing on a surface. Nothing on a wall, nothing marked, nothing that could be a question if you ever do go.

And it stays. Not until something else comes up. It stays, in the open, where the morning finds it, because a man who lives somewhere has things in the open and a man who is passing through does not.

You are putting one object into the open in a place you live, and a thing standing on a counter has never once needed a lease to be long enough. The Spirit of God is the one at work in what a man walks past at seven in the morning, and it is written in Genesis 26:22 that the Lord made room and the man said so.