These Came From A Country I Left

There are three of them and they came in a suitcase.

You know which three. There was a limit on what could come and a lot of decisions were made in about two days, and three things came that were not clothes and not documents, and they have been in this country for nine years.

And they are in a drawer.

Or in a box on top of a wardrobe, or in the room nobody uses, and the point is that they are not out. Nine years and the three objects that carry the first twenty six years of your life are somewhere a visitor would never see them.

I want to say what I think is going on, and it is not shame.

It is that putting them out is a statement, and you have not been sure what the statement says.

Does it say this is temporary? Does it say I have not settled? Does it say something to the people here about not being from here, when you have spent nine years quietly becoming from here in every way that a person can?

So the three things stayed in the drawer, not out of embarrassment, but because nobody knew what putting them out would mean.

Tonight I want to tell you what it means, and then we are going to put them on a surface.

How shall we sing the Lord's song

There is a psalm written by people in exactly your position and it asks the question directly.

How shall we sing the LORD's song in a strange land? (Psalm 137:4, King James Version)

That is a real question, asked by real people, and the psalm does not answer it in the next line.

You are asking something Scripture asks in the same words, and a man in a strange land has never once been the first one to wonder how it is done. Psalm 137:4 puts the question into the record without resolving it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man nine years from where he started.

Now notice the whole shape of that psalm, because it is important and it is not what a person expects.

It does not tell them to stop remembering. It does not say the harps should be picked up and everybody should get on with it. It sits in the difficulty, at length, and it does not hurry anybody.

And it is itself a song. That is the thing that answers the question. The psalm asking how shall we sing in a strange land is a song sung in a strange land, and it got written down and it is still being sung.

You are holding a question that Scripture answered by singing it, and where a person came from has never once had to be silent in the place they live now. The Spirit of God is the one who put that psalm into the record rather than a correction of it, and it is written in Psalm 137:4 that the question was asked and the asking became the song.

What the three things are for

Now the practical part, and it is about what putting them out actually says.

It does not say this is temporary. It says a man lives here who came from somewhere.

That is the whole of the statement and it is not ambiguous once it is said plainly. Every person in that street came from somewhere. Yours is further away and it is more visible and that is the only difference.

You are able to be from somewhere and live here at the same time, and one object on a shelf has never once been a claim about not belonging. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds both of those at once in a man, and Psalm 137:4 asks its question from inside a strange land without resolving to leave.

And here is the piece that matters most, and it is about your children if you have them and about you if you do not.

Nine years in a drawer is nine years of those objects being private. And a private object cannot be asked about.

A thing on a shelf gets a question. Somebody picks it up and asks where it is from, and then a man gets to answer, and the answering is the thing that has not been happening for nine years. Not because anybody refused to listen. Because nothing in that house has ever prompted the question.

You are able to give somebody a reason to ask, and an object in a drawer has never once been able to start a conversation about where a man is from. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man gets to tell somebody where he came from, and it is written in Psalm 137:4 that the question got asked out loud and became part of the record.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on whether you have settled, not on how well it has gone, not on what you left. Three things in a drawer are not a verdict on the man who carried them across the world, and I am not going to allow them to be read that way.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a suitcase, and what is out or in a drawer has never once been a statement about who somebody is. Psalm 137:4 puts the question into a song in Psalm 137, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Three things, in the main room

So here is the assignment, and the main room is the whole of it.

Put the three things you brought with you on one surface together tonight, and let them be in the main room rather than in a drawer.

All three. Together, on one surface, with space between them, arranged rather than set down.

And in the main room. The room where people sit. Not the back room, not the bedroom, not somewhere they are technically out but nobody goes.

You are putting three things into the room where people actually sit, and an object in the main room has never once said anything except that somebody lives here. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man puts where he came from into the room where he receives people, and Psalm 137:4 asks its question openly rather than privately.

Then leave them and say nothing about them.

Somebody will ask. It may take a month. And when they do, do not give a short answer, because the short answer is what nine years of a drawer has trained into you and it is not what the person asking wants.

Tell them where it is from. Tell them who had it before you. Tell them what the room looked like that it used to stand in.

You are able to answer at length when somebody finally asks, and a full answer has never once been more than the person asking was hoping for. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man tells somebody about a room on the other side of the world, and it is written in Psalm 137:4 that the song got sung in the strange land rather than withheld until it was no longer strange.