I Am Keeping It For Children Who Do Not Want It

Both of them have said it and you heard them both times.

They said it kindly. They said they did not have the space. One of them said, in a voice that was trying to be gentle, that it was not really their thing.

And the furniture and the china and the two boxes are still in that room, being kept, for two people who have said out loud that they do not want them.

I want to name what is going on there, because it is not stubbornness and it is not a hearing problem.

There are two different things sitting on top of each other, and while they are stuck together nothing can move.

The first is a plan. You would pass these things on, because that is what happens, because it happened to you, because a household is supposed to move down a generation and this is the mechanism by which that occurs.

The second is a set of objects that are being stored for a plan that has been declined.

And the reason the declining does not resolve it is that the plan is not really about the objects. It is about a shape a family is supposed to have. And they said no to a dining set, and what it felt like was a no to the shape.

Tonight is not about the dining set.

An inheritance to the children's children

There is a proverb about passing things on and the thing it names being passed is not property.

A good man leaveth an inheritance to his children's children: and the wealth of the sinner is laid up for the just. (Proverbs 13:22, King James Version)

Leaveth an inheritance. And the word in that proverb covers a great deal more than furniture, which is the whole point of reading it carefully.

You are already leaving the kind of inheritance that proverb is about, and a dining set has never once been what a good woman leaves to her children's children. Proverbs 13:22 puts the inheritance in a category much larger than property, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman standing in a room full of storage.

Now look at the reach in that verse, because it is unexpected.

Children's children. It skips a generation. The thing being described travels further than the next set of hands, and it arrives with people who have not been born.

Nothing you can put in a box does that. Furniture reaches the next generation at best, if they want it, and often not. What that verse describes goes two generations out and is not carried in a van.

You have an inheritance that reaches further than any van, and what a woman actually leaves her family has never once fitted in a box. The Spirit of God is the one who carries a thing down through generations, and it is written in Proverbs 13:22 that the reach is to the children's children.

What the storing is costing

Now the practical part, and it has two halves.

The first half is the room. Objects are being stored there for a plan that has been declined, in a room in your own house, and that room is not available. Not because anybody is using it. Because it is a warehouse for a future nobody asked for.

You are entitled to the use of your own rooms, and a room held for a plan that was declined has never once been in service to anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a woman back a room in her own house, and Proverbs 13:22 puts the inheritance well beyond anything stored in one.

The second half is heavier and I want to say it gently.

Every year those things sit in storage is a year you do not use them.

They are good things. That is why they were worth passing on. And the whole time they have been in that room being preserved for two people who said no, the meals have happened on other plates and the evenings on other furniture.

The preserving has cost the use of them and has gained nothing, because the recipients declined at the start.

You are able to use good things rather than store them, and a preserved object has never once been serving anybody at all. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what a stored thing is costing, and Proverbs 13:22 locates the inheritance in something that travels further than any of it.

And here is the thing about them, and I want to be fair to them because they were kind about it.

Something will be inherited and it will not be the dining set. It will be what their mother was like. How a house got kept. Whether anything in it was enjoyed. Whether the good plates ever came out or spent thirty years in a box being saved for people who did not ask.

The daughter who said it was not really her thing will remember whether her mother ever used the good things, and that will reach her children, and it will do it without a van.

You are leaving something that will reach further than the china, and how a woman lived in her own house has never once been a smaller inheritance than her furniture. The Spirit of God is the one who carries what a person was like down two generations, and it is written in Proverbs 13:22 that the inheritance reaches the children's children.

And this, plainly, in these words. That room is not a report on you. Not on your mothering, not on your generosity, not on whether you raised them to value the right things. A room full of storage is not a verdict on the woman keeping it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a dining set, and what a family does or does not want has never once been a measure of the one who offered it. Proverbs 13:22 puts the inheritance beyond property in Proverbs 13, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

One thing out, into use

So here is the assignment, and the words into use are the whole of it.

Take one thing out of storage tonight that was being kept for them, and put it into use in the room you actually sit in.

One thing. Not the set. Not a decision about any of it. One object.

Something good, that has been kept, that you would use if it were not being saved. A serving dish. A chair. A lamp. A blanket. The thing you would have picked if none of this had ever been a plan.

You are taking one thing out of storage without deciding anything about the rest, and one object into use has never once been a decision about a whole room. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman uses something she has been keeping, and Proverbs 13:22 puts the real inheritance well beyond the furniture.

Then into use. Not on display. In service, in the room you actually sit in, where it will be handled and put down and used and eventually marked.

That last part will be the hardest and it is the point. A thing being kept for somebody is unmarked. A thing in use gets marked, and the marks are what a used object has instead of a plan.

And nothing else moves. The rest stays where it is. No decisions, no offers, no conversations with anybody about who gets what, because tonight is not about them and it never was.

You are putting one good thing into service in your own house, and an object that gets marked has never once been worth less than one that was saved. The Spirit of God is the one present when a woman uses what she has, and it is written in Proverbs 13:22 that what a good woman leaves reaches two generations out.