I Hate It And I Cannot Get Rid Of It

There is a thing in that room you would never have chosen and you look at it every day.

He gave it to you. That is the whole reason it is there. It went up within a week of arriving, because that is what a man does with a gift, and it has been there for about eleven years.

And you do not like it. You have never liked it. And you have never said so to anybody, because saying so out loud feels like a comment about him rather than about an object, and he is a good man and he meant it well.

So the thing stays, and every day you look at a wall in your own house and see a decision that was made by somebody else about what you should be looking at.

I want to be careful here, because there is a cheap version of this article and it would be worthless to you.

The cheap version says it is only an object, get rid of it, he will never know. That is not right and you already know it is not right, because objects given by people are not only objects and pretending otherwise is how a man ends up doing something he regrets.

So we are not going to get rid of it. Nothing is going in a bag tonight.

We are going to separate two things that got welded together in the first week, and then move one of them about thirty feet.

He stripped himself and gave it to David

There is a moment in Samuel where a gift changes hands and the passage is unusually specific about what the gift was.

And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle. (1 Samuel 18:4, King James Version)

A robe, garments, a sword, a bow, a belt. Every one of those is a thing that gets used.

You are looking at a category of gift Scripture records being given, and a gift has never once been given in order to be looked at. 1 Samuel 18:4 lists garments and weapons rather than ornaments, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man standing in his own living room.

Now notice what the giving is about in that passage, because the objects are almost incidental to it.

The verse before it says their souls were knit together. The gift is a sign of that. The robe and the sword are the visible part of something that was already true between two men, and their whole value is as a token of it.

Which means the meaning was never in the object. The meaning was in the friendship, and the object pointed at it.

You are holding a token rather than the thing itself, and an object has never once been where a friendship was actually kept. The Spirit of God is the one who knits people together, and it is written in 1 Samuel 18:4 that the giving was the sign of something that already stood between them.

Two things welded in the first week

Now the separation, and it is the whole of this article.

Two things got welded together in the week that thing arrived.

One: he is a good man and he thought of me. That is true, permanently, and nothing tonight touches it.

Two: therefore this object goes on that wall in that room forever. That is not true, and nobody ever said it, and it arrived attached to the first one without anybody noticing.

You are able to hold the first one and let go of the second, and gratitude has never once come with a fixed location attached to it. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates two things that got welded together, and 1 Samuel 18:4 puts the meaning in the knitting of two souls rather than in the robe.

And here is the practical thing, and it is smaller than you think.

There is a difference between getting rid of a gift and moving one.

Moving it is not a comment about him. Every object in a house gets moved at some point in eleven years, and no reasonable person keeps a mental record of where their gift ended up. The hall, the back room, the landing, the spare room, the garage if it is that kind of object.

It is still in the house. It is still kept. He is still thought of. And it is no longer the thing you look at from the chair you sit in every evening.

You are able to keep something without displaying it in the best place in the house, and a gift in the hall has never once been a gift refused. The Spirit of God is the one present in a small honest act rather than a large dishonest one, and it is written in 1 Samuel 18:4 that the value was in the bond rather than the belongings.

And this, plainly. That object is not a report on you. Not on your gratitude, not on your friendship, not on whether you are the kind of man who values what he is given. Eleven years of a thing you dislike on a wall is not a verdict on the man looking at it, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a wall, and an object kept out of loyalty has never once been a statement about who somebody is. 1 Samuel 18:4 puts the whole meaning into the knitting of two souls in 1 Samuel 18, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Thirty feet, and something you like

So here is the assignment, and there are two halves.

Move that thing to a different room tonight, and put something you actually like where it was.

First. Take it down or off, carry it to another room, and put it somewhere reasonable. The hall, the back room, the spare room, the landing.

Somewhere reasonable, not somewhere insulting. This is not a demotion and there is no point in doing it in a way that makes you feel worse.

You are moving an object without refusing a person, and thirty feet has never once been the same distance as a bag. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man makes a small honest change in his own house, and 1 Samuel 18:4 has the meaning of a gift sitting in the bond rather than in the belongings.

Then the second half, and this is the one that matters.

Put something you actually like where it was.

Because an empty space where that thing used to be is a story about him, and a thing you like in that space is a story about you living in your own house. And the second one is what tonight is for.

It does not have to be impressive. Something from a drawer. A photograph. Something from a place you went. Anything that was chosen by you for no reason except that you liked it.

And then sit in your chair and look at that wall, and notice that the thing you are looking at every evening is now a thing you chose.

You are choosing what you look at every evening in your own house, and one object put up by your own hand has never once been an ingratitude toward anybody. The Spirit of God is the one present in a man's own choice in his own room, and it is written in 1 Samuel 18:4 that the giving was a sign and the friendship was the thing.