The Doctor Wrote A Number Down

He wrote something down and turned the screen slightly toward you.

He was not unkind about it. He said a couple of sentences and used the word ideally, and then he moved on to something else, and you were out of the building nine minutes later with a piece of paper you have not looked at since.

And it has been in your head for eleven days.

You have been out four times since then. Which is four more than the previous three months, so on one view this is working, and I want to be honest with you about why I do not think it is.

Because the reason has a date on it.

You are going back in six months. And there are exactly two things that can happen at that appointment. Either the number has moved, in which case the reason is discharged and you can stop. Or it has not moved, in which case the whole effort is judged to have failed and you can stop.

That is not a motive. That is a countdown with two exits, and both of them are marked stop.

You have done this before. Twice, actually. Once after the thing with your father, and again about four years ago, and both times you were out four times a week for about two months and then it evaporated, and the evaporation was not a failure of will.

It was the reason running out.

The life is more than meat

There is a line in Luke about the relative size of things, and it is usually read as being about worry.

The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. (Luke 12:23, King James Version)

The life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.

It is a statement about proportion. The larger thing is named first and the smaller thing second, and the point is that people habitually get them the wrong way round.

You have a verse that puts your life above the maintenance of it, and Luke 12:23 has never once made the upkeep the point of the thing being kept. The life is named as the greater, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man what the larger item on his own list actually is.

You are able to apply that directly here, and it lands somewhere slightly unexpected.

A number on a chart is maintenance. It is a reading about the upkeep of the machine. It is not nothing, and I am not going to be dismissive about a doctor, who is doing his job and doing it properly.

But maintenance is a poor motive for a man because it has no direction in it. Nothing is being built. It is servicing something in order to keep it running, which is a fine reason to change the oil in a car and a thin reason to reorganize a life.

And thin reasons do not survive a bad month. They survive eleven days and four attempts, which is exactly what has happened.

You are able to move for the larger item rather than for the upkeep of the smaller one, and Luke 12:23 has never once put the maintenance above the life. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man the size of what is actually in front of him, and the verse names the life first on purpose.

The reason that is standing in your hallway

Here is the reason that outlasts a chart, and it has been in the house the whole time.

Your son is twenty two and he lives forty minutes away and you see him about once every two weeks.

You have people in this house whose availability is not renewed at a six month interval, and Luke 12:23 has never once measured a life by its readings. It is written that the life is more than meat, and the Holy Spirit is the one who redirects a man's attention from a chart to a hallway.

When he comes, you sit in the front room, and you talk about work and about the car and about his sister, and it is good and it is slightly effortful for both of you, and after about ninety minutes there is a natural gap and he goes.

That is the arrangement, and it comes to about fourteen visits a year.

Now the thing about walking somewhere with a person is that it is the only known arrangement in which two men who love each other can be together for ten minutes without having to generate a subject. Nobody has to look at anybody. There is scenery. Silence is not a problem outdoors, and it is unbearable in a front room.

So the reason is not the number. The reason is that ten minutes on a road with your son is a different quality of hour than ninety minutes across a coffee table, and you have about fourteen of those a year left in the current arrangement, and no doctor is going to write that on a chart.

You have a reason with no expiry date on it, and it has never once required anybody to write anything down for it to be true. The Spirit of God is the one who is with two men walking a road, and Luke 12:23 puts the life above the maintenance of it.

Ten minutes and not once the number

So here is the assignment.

Go out for ten minutes tonight with somebody and do not think about the number once.

You are able to move without the reading being anywhere in it, and its absence has never once made the ten minutes count for less. It is written that the body is more than raiment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on a road where nothing is being monitored.

Take whoever is in the house. If your son is not there, your wife. If nobody is there, ring him and go while you are talking, which is not as good and is much better than nothing.

And when the number arrives in your head, which it will, at about minute three, do not argue with it. Just notice that it came, and go back to whatever is being talked about.

Six months from now the appointment happens, and one of two things is said, and either way you keep going, because the reason you are out there has nothing to do with what gets said in that room.

You have a reason that no appointment can discharge and no appointment can fail, and choosing that one has never once been the same as not caring what the chart says. Luke 12:23 makes the life the greater item, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man walking after the paper has been filed.