A Ledge In A Room I Did Not Choose

There is a ledge under the window and it is about the width of your forearm.

That is the whole of it now. And you know exactly what was before it, and how much of it there was, and you could walk me round that garden in your head with your eyes shut.

So when somebody cheerful suggests putting something on the ledge, there is a thing that happens in your chest that they do not see, and it is not gratitude.

Let me name it plainly, because I think it deserves naming rather than managing.

It feels like being offered the last small piece of a thing you used to have all of.

You are not down to nothing, and one ledge has never once been the leftover of a garden.

And I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this article that would be an insult to you.

The insult would be to tell you that the ledge is just as good. It is not just as good, you had a garden and now you have a ledge, and pretending otherwise would ask you to be stupid in order to be cheerful.

What I would like to put to you instead is narrower, and I think it is true.

The ledge is not a smaller portion of the garden. It is not the last slice. It is a different thing entirely, and the comparison that keeps running is comparing two objects that are not the same kind of object at all.

Forsake me not in mine old age

There is a prayer in Psalm 71 that is unusually specific about a stage of life.

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, O God, forsake me not; until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation, and thy power to every one that is to come. (Psalm 71:18, King James Version)

Now also when I am old and grayheaded, forsake me not.

Now, the first thing to see is that this is a request rather than a reassurance. He is asking. Which means the fear of being left behind at that stage is not a modern invention and it is not a failure of faith. It is in the psalter, in a man's own mouth.

You are not the first person to name that particular fear, and a request like that has never once been treated as a lapse. Psalm 71:18 has an old man asking outright not to be forsaken, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that from being read as weakness.

And then the second half, which is the part that changes the picture. Until I have shewed thy strength unto this generation.

He is not asking for comfort. He is asking for time, and he is asking for it because he has something still to do. There is a job in that verse and the job is on the far side of the request.

You are inside a psalm where old age has work attached to it, and being old has never once been described there as the part after the useful bit. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person something still to do, and the written word puts a task on the other side of the prayer.

And notice who the work is aimed at. This generation, and every one that is to come.

That is not a small audience and it is not limited to the people in the building. It reaches forward past him.

You are still standing inside something that reaches past you, and a person in a small room has never once been outside the range of that sentence. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps somebody in a story rather than at the end of it, and the word says every one that is to come.

A ledge is not a slice of a garden

Let me make the distinction properly, because I think it will hold.

A garden is a place a person goes to. It is out there, it has weather in it, there is a threshold to cross, and part of what it does is take somebody somewhere.

A ledge is a thing a person sits next to. It is at eye level from a chair. That is a closeness nobody ever has to a border, and it gets seen in more different lights in a week than most of that garden got seen in a year.

Those are not the same activity with different amounts of it.

You are being offered a different relationship with a growing thing rather than a reduced version of the old one, and a plant at arm's length has never once been a smaller amount of a plant across a lawn. The Holy Spirit is the one who opens what is actually available now, and Psalm 71:18 puts a task in a stage of life rather than a consolation.

And there is one thing a ledge can do that the garden never could, and I would like you to have it.

You will know that plant. Not know about it. Know it, the way you know a face. You will see the day it changes, because you will be looking at it from two feet away several times a day for months.

Nobody who has ever had a large garden has known any single plant in it that well. There is not the time and there is not the proximity.

You are in a position to know one living thing better than a whole garden ever allowed, and closeness has never once been the poor relation of scale. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a kind of attention that a large space makes impossible, and the written word keeps a man useful in his old age rather than merely comfortable.

One thing, a quarter turn each morning

So here is the assignment, and the small daily part is deliberate.

Put one thing on the ledge and turn it a quarter turn each morning.

One. And a quarter turn, every morning, so that it grows evenly toward the light rather than leaning.

You are able to do one small deliberate thing with your hands each morning, and a quarter turn has never once been too little to be actual tending. Psalm 71:18 asks for time in order to do something, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room while a woman turns a pot a quarter of the way round.

Here is why the turning and not something else.

It is real horticulture. That is not a made up task invented to fill an afternoon. A plant on a windowledge genuinely leans toward the glass and genuinely needs turning, and doing it is gardening rather than being kept occupied.

And it happens at a fixed time, which means it does not depend on remembering, and it takes four seconds, which means no day is ever too bad for it.

You are doing a real job that a plant genuinely requires, and four seconds each morning has never once been a task somebody was given to fill the time. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a small daily act, and the word asks God for time on the grounds that there is something still to be done with it.

And when somebody comes in and says something cheerful about it, you do not have to agree that it is just as good. You can simply say that it is doing well, which is a different sentence and an honest one.