There are seven chairs bolted to the wall of the corridor outside the ward, blue plastic, and he has not sat in any of them in five hours. His mother has. His two sisters have taken turns. His brother-in-law came for forty minutes and sat, and left. The registrar came out twice and both times looked round the group and then spoke to him, because he is the eldest and the tallest and the one whose voice does not shake, and that is how these things get decided without anyone deciding them.
His phone has been in his hand the whole time. Work, twice. His wife, wanting to know what she should tell the children. His aunt in another city, wanting the whole story from the beginning. His younger sister, who is standing four feet away from him, texting him a question she cannot say out loud with their mother listening. He answers all of them. He goes to the machine and gets the teas. He explains what the registrar said to his mother in words she can hold, and then explains it again. He stands with his back against the wall between chair four and chair five, and the wall is the only thing that has held any of his weight since lunchtime.
He is not resentful. That is what nobody understands about people like him. He loves every one of them and he would not trade the corridor for anywhere else on earth today. It is only that at some point in the third hour a small clear thought went through him and out the other side before he could stop it: nobody has asked me. Not how he is. Not whether he has eaten. Not whether he needs a minute. He does not blame them. They are frightened and he is the wall. But the thought went through, and it left something behind.
You know that wall. You may not be in a corridor and it may not be a ward, but you know exactly what it is to be the one everybody leans on and to have nowhere at all to put your own weight, and to have that thought go through you, quietly, at the worst possible moment, and to be ashamed of it a second later. I am not going to tell you to stop being leaned on. I want to tell you what you are actually standing on while it happens.
Leaned on is not the same as load-bearing
Let me name it before I say anything else, because you will not name it yourself. This tiredness has nothing to do with sleep. Everyone in your life has a place to put their weight and that place is you, and your whole self is arranged around being able to take it, and it has never once occurred to anyone, including you, that you might need the same thing. And underneath the tiredness there is a fear you would never say out loud: that if you sat down, even for a minute, something would fall, and it would be your fault, because the thing holding it up was you.
I read texts for a living, so let me read you one, and I want you to hear the grammar of it.
Cast your burden on the Lord, and he will sustain you; he will never permit the righteous to be moved.Psalm 55:22
The Hebrew word translated burden there is a rare one. It appears once in the whole Hebrew Bible, in that verse, and the old teachers were not sure of it; it can carry the sense of what has been given you, your lot, the load that landed on you rather than the one you picked up. I will not tell you more than the text will bear. But notice the verb that follows, because that one is not rare at all. Sustain is the word for holding something up from underneath, for containing a weight. Cast what landed on you onto the Lord, and He holds it up. He does not say cast the people onto Him. It is the weight, not the people.
You are held by God, and you are not the foundation of anybody. I am not saying that as a comfort. It is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the One who takes a written verse and makes it a floor under a person in a corridor. Your mother is not standing on you. Your sisters are not standing on you. They are leaning on you, which is a different thing, and the ground under all of you is the same ground, and it is not you.
That difference matters more than any other sentence in this message, so let me say it plainly. Leaned on is what a wall is for. Load-bearing is what a foundation is for. You have been living as if you were the second when you were only ever asked to be the first, and the difference is the whole of your exhaustion.
The order arrived with a presence attached
This site's name is a sentence you heard all your life, usually from people who needed you to keep going. Be strong. Let me take you back to where it was first said, because it was not said the way it has been said to you.
When God said it to Joshua, the sentence did not stop where people stop it. Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go (Joshua 1:9). Read the second half. The order came with a Person attached to it. Joshua was not being told to produce strength. He was being told who was with him while he did not have any. Every time Scripture says be strong, look at the next clause, and you will find the same thing: the strength is His and the presence is the point.
You have the same clause attached to you tonight, in the corridor, standing between chair four and chair five. The Lord your God is with you wherever you go, and He is with you at the tea machine and at the ward door, and His Spirit is the One who makes what was promised to Joshua a present tense fact in a man holding four phones' worth of other people's fear. You were not told to be the strength. You were told who was.
Peter picks the same thread up on the far side of the cross and says it even more simply: casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). He cares for you. Not for the people you are carrying, though He does. For you. The one nobody has asked.
I want to be careful here, because I know the move your mind will make. It will hear cast your burden and translate it into so step back from them. That is not what I am saying and it is not what the text says. Nobody in that corridor needs you less. What changes is not whether they lean on you. What changes is what you are standing on while they do, and whether there is anywhere at all for your own weight to go. There is. It is underneath. It has been underneath the whole five hours.
You are allowed to sit down, and nothing falls when you do. I do not say that as permission from me; I say it because Scripture says He never permits the righteous to be moved, and the Holy Spirit is the One holding what you have been afraid to set down. The people you love are being held by God whether you are on your feet or in the chair. That is not less love. It is more accurate love.
Here is the transfer, and it is not a technique and it is not a step back.
For years the weight has run one way: everyone onto you, and you onto nothing. Tonight the second half of that changes, and only the second half. They still lean on you. You are still the one the registrar looks for. What changes is that underneath you, where there has been a wall and a phone and five hours of standing, there is a Person, and He is holding what you have been holding, and He is holding you.
You have somewhere to put your weight, right now, in this corridor, and it is not the wall. It is written that He sustains the one who casts the load on Him, and it is His Spirit who carries that from the page into a tired man's shoulders. Whatever the next hours hold behind that ward door is His to hold, and I will not pretend to know it. What I know is that you were never the foundation, and the foundation has not moved.
Declare this over yourself
Say these three out loud, hands still open, and let me tell you why you may. You have been given the authority to speak to what stands in your way, because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and Jesus said that faith no bigger than a seed, spoken to the mountain, moves it. Spoken. Not carried silently down a corridor. The mountain here is not your family, whom I would never have you command; it is the belief that if you sit down it all falls, and you have every right in His name to speak to that. It is written that He sustains and does not let the righteous be moved, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes those words live in you, not the strength left in your voice. What happens behind the ward door is not yours to carry and not mine to promise; His timing is His own and you leave the outcome with Him. Where your weight goes tonight is not in question.
- Corridor full of people who need me, you are not the ground I stand on, and I am not the ground you stand on either. Scripture says cast your burden on the Lord and He sustains you, and He does the sustaining for all of us at once.
- Belief that if I sit down it all falls, you have kept me on my feet for five hours and you have no ground under you, and in the name of Jesus you leave this corridor. His word says He never lets the righteous be moved, and His Spirit is the One holding what I set down, not my back.
- Lord, You are underneath me, and I am the foundation of nobody. I thank You that You carry the ones who lean on me and You carry me too, and I am sitting down now with my hands open.
Psalm 55:22
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