The Lord Knows Who Are His

Five addresses in six years, and every one of them for a good reason at the time.

Two for work. One because the landlord sold. One because a relationship ended in a way that made staying impossible. One because the place was damp and his chest could not take another winter in it.

He is not chaotic. He would object to that strongly, and he would be right. Every move was sensible and every one of them was decided in about four days.

But there is a thing that happens to a man who moves that often, and nobody warns you about it, because it does not look like anything.

He is not on any list.

Not the doctor's, properly. Not the electoral one, because the form came to the last place. Not the church one, because he has been at three and been added to none, and he is not going to be the man who asks. Not on the round-robin from his old work. Not on the group that organizes the fishing, which he genuinely misses.

Ask him whether he is lonely and he will say no, and mean it, because he has friends, and he does.

Ask him at about half past eleven at night whether anybody, anywhere, has him written down, and something goes quiet in him for a moment, and then he thinks about God, and then he thinks: probably. And probably is a terrible word to go to sleep on.

A seal, and what is written on it

Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his (2 Timothy 2:19).

Paul is writing to a young man in a mess of a situation where people are falling away and nobody can tell any more who is genuine, and this is the sentence he gives him.

A seal is a mark of ownership pressed into something. It is not a list. That is the whole force of the image. A list can be lost, superseded, rebuilt from bad data, or simply never updated. A seal is on the object.

And what is inscribed on this one is not a name of a person, which is the interesting part. It is a statement about God: the Lord knows them that are His.

Not: the elders know. Not: the register knows. The Lord knows, which is the only knowing in that sentence that does not depend on paperwork.

You are known by the one whose knowing does not run off a list. That is what the seal says, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it land on a man at half past eleven, because Scripture says the Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and a witness is somebody who says out loud what is true.

Falling off lists is not a moral condition

Let me be plain about this, because a man in your position starts to wonder about himself and the wondering is unearned.

You did not fall off those lists because of anything wrong with you. You fell off them because lists are maintained by organizations for their own purposes and they are updated when somebody has time, and a man who moves five times in six years outruns the update cycle. That is administration, not judgement.

The trouble is that after a few years of it, a man starts to experience being un-listed as being un-belonging, and those are not the same thing at all, and nothing in his week ever tells him the difference.

You have not been dropped by anybody who matters. The word says God has said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee (Hebrews 13:5), and that is a sentence about a person rather than an entry, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a promise like that steady a man in a rented room in his fifth place.

Probably is not what the verse says

Now let me get at the word you go to sleep on.

Probably.

That is what you said to yourself, and it is honest, and it is also nowhere near what is written. The verse does not say the Lord probably knows. It does not say He has a general awareness of the situation. It says He knows them that are His, and the verb there is a knowing-by-relationship word rather than a knowing-about word.

He does not have you in a file. He has you the way a man has a brother.

You are known and not approximately known. Scripture says I am the good shepherd and know my sheep and am known of mine (John 10:14), and that knowing runs in both directions in the same sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who turns probably into a settled thing in a man's chest, which is not a work a man can do for himself at half past eleven.

And I will be honest, because you would spot it. Nothing here gets you back on the electoral register or into the fishing group, and both of those matter and I hope somebody sorts them. What is settled is the seal, and a man who knows what is written on it goes to sleep on a better word than probably.