The One Who Carries It

He has been the one who goes for so long that people have stopped asking whether it suits him.

If somebody on that road is ill, Rua goes. If there is a death, Rua is there before the family have finished ringing people. If somebody young is in trouble, it is Rua's truck outside at eleven at night, and he says the true things and he says them well and he does not leave early.

He is fifty-two. He has done this for about twenty-five years, and he did not appoint himself and nobody appointed him. It happened the way these things happen, which is that he went once and it helped, and then he went again.

In August his own brother died.

And the house filled up, and people were good, and there was more food than anybody could eat, and about forty people came through in three days.

And every single one of them, without exception, said something to him about how he would know what to say to himself.

They meant it kindly. Several of them said it with tears. It is not a criticism of one person in that house.

But Rua sat on the end of the porch on the third night when everybody had gone, with the plates stacked and the water going dark, and he understood something he has not been able to put down since.

Nobody had brought him anything.

Not one person in three days had said the thing to him. They had all assumed, reasonably and affectionately, that he already had it, because he is the man who carries it up and down that road.

And he does have it. That is not the problem.

He just has not stood underneath it in a very long time, and he could not tell you when he last did, and he found himself on that porch in the position of a man who has served water to a whole village for twenty-five years and has not had a drink since he cannot remember.

And you may know that porch. You may be the one people ring, and everybody may be certain you are fine, including you until about eleven at night.

In the picture, the one who carries is also the one who is gathered

Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it up that road for twenty-five years and it was never yours to carry alone.

You are not outside the arrangement. You never were. Scripture draws the picture with the carrier and the carried in the same frame, and it is the Holy Spirit, not your position on that road, who does the gathering. Set it down here on the porch. It is heavy and it has been on you since August.

Now hear the verse, and watch what the shepherd does with His arms.

He tends His flock like a shepherd: He gathers the lambs in His arms and carries them close to His heart; He gently leads those that have young.Isaiah 40:11

Look at that last line, because it is the one for you.

He gently leads those that have young.

That is the ewe. That is not a lamb being carried; that is the one doing the carrying, the one with others depending on her, the one who cannot simply be picked up because she has a job on.

And she is not left out of the sentence. She gets her own clause, and the word attached to her is gently, and the reason is that a creature with young is slower and more tired and needs the pace set for her rather than by her.

You are in that clause. Right now, at fifty-two, at the end of a porch with the plates stacked. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who leads at that pace, and He has never once excluded a carrier from being carried.

Now let me be careful, because there is a ditch here and I am not putting you in it.

Nothing here is a complaint about the forty people who came through your house. They came, which is more than many would. They loved your brother and they love you and they meant every word, and it is not their fault that you are the man they have all leaned on.

And nothing here says the twenty-five years were a mistake or that you should go less. Those visits held people who would not have been held otherwise, and Scripture honors every one of them and His Spirit was in that truck.

The point is only that you have been outside your own arrangement, and nobody arranged that either. It simply happened, the way it happened that you started going.

Here is the plain part, and Scripture is direct about it. You are not going to be brought anything by that road, and His Spirit was never waiting on that road either.

Not because they do not love you. Because everybody who might have brought it is waiting for you, and the room a person occupies is very hard to change from inside it.

So it comes another way. His word puts the ewe in the sentence on purpose, and His Spirit is the one who leads her gently, and neither of them has ever waited for a village to notice.