An Animal Took It In The Night

Something came through in the night and took it.

A deer, or a rabbit, or whatever it was. You found it in the morning, cut off about two inches from the ground, and the rest of it gone.

And what has been sitting in you since is a peculiar and rather uncomfortable thing.

You are angry, and there is nothing to be angry at.

Not nobody. Nothing. Because a person can at least be angry at a neighbor and then decide not to be. There is a whole procedure available. But an animal has no intent whatsoever. It did not target you. It was not being anything toward you. It ate a plant because it was a plant and it was hungry.

You are not wrong to feel it, and anger at something that meant nothing by it has never once been an unreasonable thing to carry.

And here is the specific bind, which is why this is worth a whole article.

You cannot forgive an animal. There is nothing to forgive, because nothing was done against you. The whole apparatus a person uses for being wronged does not fit the situation, and so the feeling has no route out.

It just sits there, and it is faintly ridiculous, and you have not mentioned it to anybody.

Commune with your own heart upon your bed

There is a line in Psalm 4 that gives an instruction for a feeling that has nowhere to go, and it is oddly specific about the location.

Stand in awe, and sin not: commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still. (Psalm 4:4, King James Version)

Commune with your own heart upon your bed, and be still.

Now, the first thing is that this is addressed to people who are agitated. The psalm around it is about people who are troubled and stirred up, and the instruction assumes a person with something churning in them.

It does not tell them to stop having it.

You are being given an instruction for what to do with a feeling rather than a rebuke for having it, and Scripture has never once told an agitated man that the agitation itself was the fault. Psalm 4:4 assumes the churning and gives it somewhere to go, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has been angry at a rabbit for a week.

And notice the sequence, because the order is the whole of it. Stand in awe, and sin not. Commune with your own heart. And be still.

Being still comes last. It is not the instruction, it is the outcome, and there are two things before it.

Most people try to start at the end. They tell themselves to let it go, which is an attempt to get to be still without doing the communing, and it does not work and never has.

You are not being told to skip to the end, and stillness has never once been available as the first move in that verse. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a person through the order rather than to the destination, and the written word puts the communing before the being still.

And then the location. Upon your bed. That is a specific place and it is the one place where a person is alone, unoccupied, and not performing anything.

It is also, as it happens, the place where this sort of thing surfaces anyway.

You are being sent to the exact hour when it already arrives, and the time a thing surfaces on its own has never once been the wrong time to meet it. Psalm 4:4 names the bed rather than giving a general instruction to reflect, and the Holy Spirit is the one already there when it comes up.

You are being pointed at the exact hour when it already comes up, and the place a thing surfaces has never once been the wrong place to deal with it. The Spirit of God is the one who meets somebody where the thing actually arrives, and the word names the bed rather than a general instruction to reflect.

Nothing was done to you

Let me be practical about the bind, because there is a way through it and it is not forgiveness.

Forgiveness is the wrong tool. It keeps getting reached for and it does not engage, and the conclusion drawn is that something is wrong with the man reaching.

But forgiveness is for wrongs, and no wrong occurred. An animal cannot wrong anybody. It has no standing to be forgiven and no debt to be released from, and reaching for that tool in this situation is like reaching for a key when there is no lock.

You are holding the wrong instrument rather than failing at the right one, and a tool that does not fit a situation has never once been a report on the person holding it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man which category a thing is actually in, and Psalm 4:4 offers communing and stillness rather than a transaction between parties.

And here is what is actually in your hands, described properly.

It is grief with the shape of anger. Something was taken and nobody took it. The loss is real and there is no counterparty, and anger is the form that loss takes when there is no one to be sad at.

That is not a fault in you. It is what a person does with a loss that has no address on it.

You are carrying a grief wearing the shape of anger, and a loss with no counterparty has never once come out looking like plain sorrow. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what a feeling actually is underneath its shape, and the written word gives an instruction for a stirred up man without ever naming what stirred him.

Say it on your bed, and be still

So here is the assignment, and the verse gives the whole of it.

Say it on your own bed at night, once, and then be still.

Lying down, in the dark, when it comes up as it does. Say it. Out loud or not, it does not matter. Something took it and I am angry about it and there is nobody to be angry at.

You are able to say the whole of a thing in the one place where nobody is listening, and a sentence said lying down has never once been a smaller sentence than one said standing up. Psalm 4:4 names the bed specifically, and the Holy Spirit is the one there in the dark while a man says it.

That is the communing. It is not analysis and it is not a prayer with a shape. It is telling yourself the truth about what is in you, in the place the verse names.

And then be still. Which is the third instruction and comes after the other two.

Be still does not mean feel nothing. It means stop working on it. Stop turning it. Stop looking for the thing to do about it, because there is nothing to do about it and the looking is most of what has kept it going.

You are able to stop working on something that has no available action, and putting a thing down has never once required a man to have solved it first. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the stillness that comes after the saying, and the word puts be still at the end of a sequence rather than at the start.

And in the morning, put a low guard around that corner. Not as a response to the anger. Because a guard is a sensible thing to have where something is eating your plants.