It Went When I Got Ill

The garden did not get neglected. The garden went while you were somewhere else.

That is the accurate account and I want it on the table first, because the word neglect has been doing a lot of quiet damage and it is not the right word.

You were ill. Properly ill, for long enough that the seasons went past without you, and by the time you were back in the world in any real way it had become the thing it is now.

And you have not been out there since.

Not because of the work. You have done harder work than that. It is that going out there means standing in the physical evidence of a year you have decided not to talk about.

You are not going out there to face a verdict, and ground that went while a man was ill has never once been a report on how he handled it.

Let me be precise about the mechanism, because I think it is worth seeing.

Everywhere else in your life, that year has been tidied. The people who needed to know, know. The ones who did not have been given the short version. You have a sentence you use about it that closes the subject in about four seconds.

But the garden did not get the short version. The garden is the one place where the whole of it is still visible at actual size, in daylight, without any editing, and you cannot say four words and have it close.

Make all his bed in his sickness

There is a line in Psalm 41 that is one of the most physical descriptions of God's care anywhere in Scripture.

The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness. (Psalm 41:3, King James Version)

Thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.

Now, making a bed with somebody in it is a specific act, and anybody who has been ill for a long time or has cared for somebody who was knows exactly what it is. It is close work. It is turning a person, and smoothing what is under them, and it happens at the level of the mattress rather than from any height.

You were being attended to at that level rather than watched from a distance, and a man in a long illness has never once been left alone in that psalm. Psalm 41:3 puts God's hands on the bedding itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ancient line describe a year a man will not discuss.

And notice the word all. Make all his bed.

Not part of it. Not the presentable side. The whole of it, including the parts nobody would show a visitor, which is where the real business of a long illness happens.

You are not carrying a year with a part of it that God did not attend to, and the worst stretch of it has never once been a stretch He was absent from. The Holy Spirit is the one who was in the whole of it rather than in the tellable half, and the written word says all his bed without any exception written into it.

And there is the first half of the verse too, which is the one that speaks to the garden. The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing.

Upon it. Not after it. The strengthening happens in the place of the languishing rather than being held back until a man is up and about.

You were being strengthened during the part you have written off, and a stretch a man cannot account for has never once been a stretch in which nothing was done for him. The Spirit of God is the one who works upon the bed rather than waiting at the far end of the illness, and the word puts the strengthening in the same sentence as the languishing.

The ground is not an accusation

Let me deal with what is actually out there, because I think it has been given a role it cannot carry.

That yard is not a record of your conduct. It is a record of the weather.

Two summers of rain and sun happened to a piece of ground that nobody was working. That is all that has occurred out there. Grass did what grass does. Bramble did what bramble does. None of it is about you and none of it was aimed at you.

You are looking at a record of two summers rather than a record of a man, and ground that grew while nobody worked it has never once been evidence about the person who was ill. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a fact from an accusation, and Psalm 41:3 describes a man being cared for in his sickness rather than being assessed during it.

And there is something else out there that I want you to be ready for, because it catches people.

Some of it will have done well. Something you planted years ago will have got on with it entirely without you, and there is a decent chance one or two things out there are better than they were.

That can land strangely. It can feel like being told you were not needed.

You are allowed to feel odd about a thing that flourished without you, and a garden that carried on has never once been telling a man he was unnecessary. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a thing going while somebody cannot, and the written word has God making a bed for the man who is not able to make it himself.

Stand in it and touch nothing

So here is the assignment, and it is smaller than anybody expects and it is deliberately not work.

Go out and stand in it once, and come back in without touching anything.

Not at the edge. In it. Far enough that you are surrounded by it rather than looking at it.

You are able to be inside a thing without beginning to fix it, and standing in a yard has never once obliged a man to start doing something about it. Psalm 41:3 has God attending to a man who could not act, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while you stand in the grass.

Touch nothing. No pulling one thing on the way past, which is exactly what your hands will want to do.

Because the moment you pull something, this becomes work, and work has a size, and the size out there is enormous, and you will come back in having started a job that will take two years and having proved to yourself that it is beyond you.

Standing has no size. That is why it is the assignment.

You are permitted to go out there with nothing required of your hands, and a man standing still in his own ground has never once been a man doing nothing. The Holy Spirit is the one present where nothing is being achieved, and the word describes strengthening happening upon the bed rather than through any effort of the man in it.

And if it is worse than you thought, let it be worse than you thought, and come back in anyway. That is still the whole assignment completed.