The Sheet You Could Not Sign

It went up on the noticeboard on a Tuesday, and by Sunday there were forty one names on it.

He knows there were forty one because he counted while he stood there with his coffee, which is a thing you do when you have been standing in front of something slightly too long and need it to look like reading.

It was a good idea. He wants that said. Somebody in that church had a burden about a situation and put a sheet up and asked people to join in, and the response was lovely, and there were names on there from every corner of that congregation including two people he did not think ever read the noticeboard.

He cannot sign it. His body will not allow it and his doctor has been entirely clear about that for eleven years, and he has never regretted a single thing about that conversation until he was standing in a foyer with a pen on a string.

Here is what actually happened in him. It was not envy. It was the flat arithmetic of a man realizing that there is now a list of people who care enough about this, and that his name is not going to be on it, and that if anybody asks him why he will have to say a sentence about his health in a foyer on a Sunday morning.

So he moved on. He got another coffee he did not want.

And later somebody said, warmly, not knowing anything: you should get involved in this, it is going to be powerful.

He said it sounded great. And what he felt was not sadness exactly. It was the very particular tiredness of a man who is going to have to explain his own body to somebody, again, in order to avoid looking like he does not care.

If you have stood in front of a sheet you could not sign, come and sit down here. Nobody is going to ask you a single thing about your health.

There is no list of who is in

Let us settle that before anything else, because a sheet on a wall is an extraordinarily powerful object and it lies without meaning to.

That sheet is not a record of who cares. It is a record of who is able to do one particular thing, which are two entirely different facts about a room, and everybody who signed it would tell you so instantly if you asked them.

You are not outside anything, and there has never been a list you were missing from. That is not a kind thing said to a man with a coffee. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who was standing in that foyer with you and knew exactly what was happening while you counted names, and He did not need a pen on a string to establish anything about you.

What Paul says about the parts that cannot

There is a sentence in Corinthians written to a church that had begun ranking itself, and it does something more surprising than leveling everyone.

Nay, much more those members of the body, which seem to be more feeble, are necessary.1 Corinthians 12:22

Read the word he chose. Necessary.

He does not say tolerated, and he does not say welcome anyway, and he does not say valued in their own way, which is the phrase people reach for when they mean something considerably weaker. He says necessary, and he says the seeming feebleness is the very thing under discussion, and he says much more.

That is not consolation. That is structure. A body without the part that cannot do the visible thing is not a body being generous to a passenger. It is a body missing something it requires.

You are necessary in that room, and you were necessary before the sheet went up. I am not saying that to make a Sunday easier: it is the actual word in the actual sentence (1 Corinthians 12:22), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes it something you can stand on in a foyer rather than a nice line about inclusion.

And nothing here is going to offer you a smaller version

This is the part where a page like this usually goes wrong, so let it be said plainly: there is no reduced option coming.

Nobody here is going to suggest that since you cannot do the thing on the sheet, you might do a lesser thing instead and get partway there. That would concede the whole point, which is that there was never a scale with the sheet at the top of it.

You are not being handed a substitute, because there is nothing to substitute for. Scripture says that God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and it is His Spirit who makes that a fact about the room you were standing in rather than a doctrine you would agree with.

And this too, said out in the open. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Diabetes, pregnancy, medication, a history of a hard relationship with eating, being underweight, unwell, elderly, or simply unsure: speak to your doctor and let their answer be the answer, and if the answer is no then the answer is no and nothing on this site is disappointed about it. You are not one step further from God because of a medical instruction. Scripture says the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the Holy Spirit has never once come in a smaller measure to anybody on account of a body.

And if this week has more in it than a page can carry, if you are frightened for yourself, put this down and ring somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anyone near you is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.