It Will Be Said In An Argument One Day

It arrived while he was doing something else, which is how these usually arrive.

He was putting a shelf up and he thought: this word is going to be said in an argument.

Not a small one. A real one, at seventeen, in a hallway, with somebody slamming a door afterward.

And then, because that door opened, the rest came through it. It will be said in a hospital corridor by somebody with a clipboard. It will be said by a doctor in a room with bad news in it. It will be said at a graveside, by a person he has not met, about somebody he loves, after he is gone.

He put the shelf down and sat on the stairs for a while.

And since then he has been looking for a name that can hold all of that, and every name he tries is too light, and of course it is.

I want to say the true thing about that search, because he is a good man and he has taken on something enormous by accident.

He is not looking for a name. He is looking for a word that will make those rooms survivable, and there is no such word, and there was never going to be one.

Through the valley of the shadow of death

There is a line in the twenty third psalm that everybody has heard and almost nobody reads carefully, and the preposition is the whole thing.

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. (Psalm 23:4, King James Version)

You are given a companion rather than a way round, and Psalm 23:4 has never once offered to remove the valley from the road. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man sitting on a staircase, and the written word says through, and it says thou art with me.

Read what is not on offer. Not: you will not go there. Not: there is a route around it. The valley is on the road and the psalm says so plainly.

What is offered is one thing only: thou art with me.

And the comfort named is a rod and a staff, which are the tools of somebody walking beside, and not a map of a different route.

You have been looking for a way round rather than for a companion, and Scripture puts the valley on the road and somebody in it. Psalm 23 says through, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a presence rather than a poem.

What a name is doing in those rooms

Now the practical part, and it is a plain answer to what a name actually does in a corridor.

Nothing. And that is the good news rather than the bad.

The name is not carrying anybody in that hospital. It is not holding anything up at that graveside. It is not the thing that will get his son through a hallway at seventeen.

It is a way of turning toward a person, and that is all it has ever been, in every room, including the worst ones.

You are not asking a word to carry a life, and no verse anywhere made a name into a load bearing wall. Psalm 23:4 puts the comfort in a rod and a staff carried by somebody else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in the room rather than in the syllables.

And here is the thing about those rooms that will actually help, and it took me a long time to learn it.

In every one of them, the name gets said by somebody who is turning toward his son. Even in the argument. Especially in the argument.

Nobody uses a person's name at seventeen in a hallway unless they are still trying to reach them. The name in that argument is the last rope in the room, and it is being thrown rather than being used as a weapon.

The doctor says it because he is speaking to a person and not about a case. The one at the graveside says it because they are naming somebody they loved out loud in front of people.

You are looking at rooms where somebody is turning toward him, and Scripture makes the presence the comfort in the darkest place it names. The Spirit of God is what turns a list of terrible rooms into a list of people reaching, and Psalm 23 keeps a companion in the valley.

Say it as a blessing

So here is the assignment on this row, and it is the same one everybody on this row gets, and it answers a staircase exactly.

Say the name over the child once, out loud, as a blessing rather than a decision.

Because a man on a stairs has been testing a word against the worst four rooms of a life, and a name cannot be tested that way and has never once needed to be.

Said as a blessing, over a child, in an ordinary room, it is doing the thing it actually does, which is turning toward somebody.

You are able to give it rather than test it against a hospital, and Psalm 23:4 has never once made a word the thing that gets somebody through. The written word puts a rod and a staff in the hands of a shepherd, and the Holy Spirit is present when a father blesses a name over a child on an ordinary evening.

And the blessing is not a small thing set against the four rooms. It is the first of many thousands of turnings toward that boy, and it is the same act that will be happening in the hallway and the corridor and at the graveside.

They are all one act, done in different weather, and the first one is available tonight.

You are doing tonight what will be done in every one of those rooms, and Scripture keeps a companion in the valley rather than a better word. Psalm 23 says thou art with me, and the Holy Spirit is with a man blessing a name today.