Underneath, the Everlasting Arms

He is not in crisis and that is what has made this so difficult to explain.

Nothing has collapsed. The work goes on. He turns up. He answers what needs answering and he has not shouted at anybody and he is, by every external measure anybody could apply, fine.

He has simply run out.

He noticed it precisely, which is his habit, on a Tuesday in the autumn, standing in his own hallway with a bag in his hand, unable to work out whether he was arriving or leaving. Not confused; he knew where he had been. He simply could not locate the impulse that would make him do the next thing, and he stood there for about ninety seconds, and then he did the next thing anyway, which is what he has done every day since.

He is fifty-six. He has held things up for a long time. A household, some years ago a business, a widowed mother's affairs for four years, two people in his church nobody else knows about.

And he does not want advice, and he has been given a great deal of it, and every piece of it, every single one, arrived in the form of something else for him to do.

Rest more. Set boundaries. Take it to God. Delegate. Say no. All of it good, all of it true, and all of it another item, handed to a man whose hands are already full and whose arms have gone.

A verse that says what is underneath rather than what is required

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

Read that twice and notice what it does not ask of you.

There is no instruction in it. Nothing is required, nothing is suggested, nothing is expected. It is a statement about position, and both halves of it describe somewhere God is rather than something a person should do.

A refuge is a place you are already inside. And underneath are the everlasting arms, which is a picture of a person who is not holding anything up because they are being held up.

For a man who has received nine pieces of good advice this year, all of which were tasks, this is the only sentence anybody has handed you that is not another item.

You are held from underneath and nothing in that verse asks anything of you. That is the plain shape of it, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a statement about position into rest in a body, because Scripture says the Spirit helps our weakness and does not audit it.

The particular tiredness of a man who has not collapsed

Let me name it precisely, because you value precision and because nobody has managed it.

A collapse is legible. If you had fallen over, people would know what to do, and you would be looked after, and there would be a word for it.

What has happened to you has no event in it. There is nothing to point at. The strength is simply gone, and the functions continue, and so from the outside there is nothing at all to see, and you have therefore had to carry the running-out in addition to everything else, without anybody knowing that is what you are carrying.

That is a specific loneliness and it is common in men who hold things up and it is almost never described.

You are not required to produce an event before anybody attends to you. The word says a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench (Isaiah 42:3), which is a description of God's attention to something that has not broken and is barely going, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is described as helping rather than assessing.

Everlasting, and underneath

Two words in that verse are worth sitting with, and then I will leave it alone.

Everlasting. Which means the arms are not a response to your situation. They did not arrive in the autumn when you ran out and they will not be withdrawn when you recover. They were there in every year when you were strong and you were standing on them without noticing, the way a person stands on a floor.

And underneath. Which is the only position in which something can hold up a weight without the weight having to do anything at all.

Not beside you, which would require you to lean. Not ahead of you, which would require you to walk. Underneath, which requires nothing.

You are resting on something that has been there the whole time and is not a response to your having run out. Scripture calls them everlasting and puts them underneath, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that felt in a body, because He is called the Comforter and comfort is presence rather than instruction.

And I will keep it honest, because you would notice a claim that outran the text. Nothing here promises the strength returns this month, and nothing here explains why it went. What is settled is what is underneath, and that the one sentence God gives a man in your position asks nothing of him at all.