You Were Never Disqualified From Any Of It

He knows the texts better than most people at that table, and he has begun to think of himself as somebody who watches.

That is the word he uses in his own head. Watches. He is there for all of it. He knows every part of the year and what it is for and where each piece comes from, and he can tell you what the argument was in the ninth century about a detail that nobody else at that table has ever heard of.

And there is a set of practices at the center of that year that his body has ruled him out of since he was thirty one.

Nobody has excluded him. He would want that stated plainly, because it is true. He is loved and he is asked and his own family have made a hundred small accommodations without ever once making a speech about it.

But there is a sentence that has moved into him over about nine years, and he can date roughly when it arrived, and the sentence is: I am a scholar of a house I am not fully in.

He has never said it out loud. It sounds self pitying and he cannot bear that, and it also sounds like an accusation against people who have been nothing but good to him.

And a friend said last month, warmly, about a matter he has been praying over for years: this is one for the old practices, no?

He said yes. He agreed entirely. And that evening he sat with a book he did not read.

If you have started thinking of yourself as somebody who watches, come and sit at this table a while.

God forbids that sentence by name

Let us go straight to the text, because you will trust a text before you trust a reassurance.

Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD, speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree.Isaiah 56:3

Read what God is doing there, because it is unusual.

He is not comforting somebody. He is forbidding a sentence. He names, in advance, the two kinds of people most likely to conclude they are structurally outside, and He names the exact wording each of them would use, and He tells them not to say it.

The eunuch's line is the one for you. Behold, I am a dry tree. That is a man describing himself by what his body cannot do and drawing a conclusion about his standing from it, and God interrupts him mid sentence.

You are forbidden to say the thing you have been saying, and the forbidding is a kindness. I am not softening it: God addresses that exact conclusion and refuses it (Isaiah 56:3), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes that an actual instruction rather than an interesting passage you could teach.

And then look at what He gives instead.

Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.Isaiah 56:5

In mine house and within my walls. Not near the walls. Not welcome at the walls. Within them, with a place and a name, and the name is described as better and as everlasting and as one that cannot be cut off.

You are given a place and a name inside the house, and the giving was God's own initiative. Scripture says it in that order and with that emphasis (Isaiah 56:5), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it something a man can hold at a table where he has been thinking of himself as a spectator.

And nothing here is a smaller version for you

Here is the trap that a page like this usually falls into, so let it be avoided out loud.

Nobody is offering you a modified practice so that you can feel involved. That would confirm the entire sentence you have been carrying: that there is a real thing happening and an adapted thing for you.

You are not being accommodated, and there is nothing here that anybody else is getting more of. Scripture says God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and it is His Spirit who makes that a fact about the room you sit in rather than a principle you could source.

Now the rule this site says on every page and means. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Any medical condition, medication, pregnancy, 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. 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 telephone somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.