He Assumes He Got Dropped the Day He Broke His End

He can name the day. Not the year, the day, and he can tell you what the weather was doing.

Nobody announced anything. There was no scene and no conversation. He did a thing he had said he would not do, and somewhere in the twenty minutes afterwards he made a decision about what that meant, and he has lived inside the decision for six years.

The decision was that whatever had been in place was over, and that he had ended it, and that going back would be a kind of pretending.

He has never said any of that out loud. He would not put it in those words to anybody. If you asked him he would say he drifted, and drifted is a soft word for something he did in one afternoon.

And what is strange, when he looks at it directly, is that the other party was not consulted. He did the whole thing on his own. He read the situation, made the ruling, and closed the file.

There is a clause for exactly this

There is a short sentence in a letter to Timothy that reads like it was written for a man who has already made his ruling.

If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful: he cannot deny himself. (2 Timothy 2:13, King James Version)

If we believe not.

Paul writes the failure into the sentence. He does not phrase it as a hypothetical about somebody else. He includes it, and then says what happens next.

Yet he abideth faithful.

And the reason given is not about the person. He cannot deny himself. The faithfulness holds because of what He is, not because of what the other party has managed.

You are held by something that does not run on your end of it. 2 Timothy 2 writes the failure in and then names the reason it holds, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old clause reach a man who ruled on himself six years ago.

The other party was asleep when it was signed

There is a scene in Genesis where a covenant gets cut, and the detail that matters is what the human being was doing at the time.

God tells Abram to prepare animals and divide them. That was how a serious agreement was made: both parties walked between the pieces, and the walking said, let this happen to me if I break it.

Then this happens.

And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. (Genesis 15:12)

He is asleep. He does not walk.

And it came to pass, that, when the sun went down, and it was dark, behold a smoking furnace, and a burning lamp that passed between those pieces. (Genesis 15:17)

Only one party walks, and it is not the man.

Which means the man was never in a position to void it, because he never put his end into it in the first place.

You are inside something you were never a signatory to. Genesis 15 has one party walking and the other one asleep on the ground, and it is His Spirit who makes an ancient ceremony settle a ruling somebody made in a parking lot.

The sheep did not walk back

There is a short parable about a lost sheep that has one physical detail people skip.

And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoulders, rejoicing. (Luke 15:5)

He layeth it on his shoulders.

The animal does not walk back. It does not do a return journey. It is carried the whole way.

And a shepherd carrying a sheep on his shoulders is carrying it because that is the only way it gets there, not as a gesture.

The story does not include a section where the sheep demonstrates that it will not wander again.

You are carried back rather than required to walk it. Luke 15 puts the shoulders in the sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes one physical detail do something to six years of a man assuming he has to make the journey himself.

Jesus said what the grip depends on

There is a sentence in John where He describes the holding, and the hand He describes is not the man's.

And I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. (John 10:28)

Out of my hand.

The security is described as a grip, and the grip belongs to Him. Nothing in that sentence is about how tightly the other party is holding on.

And the next verse says the Father's hand is around that one, which is a second layer described for the same reason.

You are held in a hand that is not doing the holding on your end. John 10 describes whose grip it is, and it is His Spirit who makes an old image reach a man who has spent six years assuming he let go.

And God says outright He does not break His word

There is a line in Psalm 89 where God speaks about His own conduct with a covenant.

My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips. (Psalm 89:34)

Nor alter.

That is a second clause and it is doing work. He is not only saying He will not break it. He is saying He will not adjust the terms after the fact.

And that psalm is one of the darkest in the book. Most of it is a complaint about how things look. That sentence is in there anyway, and whoever put it there put it next to the complaint on purpose.

You are covered by something that will not be broken and will not be altered. Psalm 89 says both halves in one line and keeps it beside a complaint, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old statement of conduct outlast a private ruling.