I Am Making A Small Box And I Do Not Know What For

It is about the size of two hands.

You started it about three weeks after. You did not plan it. There was some wood, and there was an evening that had to be got through, and you found yourself cutting.

And now it is nearly a box, and it is better work than you usually do, which is its own strange fact, and you have not told anybody what you are making or why.

I want to go carefully here, because there is a very particular fear in the room and I would rather name it than talk around it.

You are frightened of what it turns out to be for.

Because a box that size has an obvious use, and the obvious use has not been said out loud in your house and possibly not in your own head, and every evening you work on it you get a little closer to a moment where the question has to be answered.

And there is a second fear behind that one, which is quieter. That the box means something is wrong with you. That a man who deals with a thing like this by going out and making something is a man who is avoiding it. That your wife is grieving properly and you are doing woodwork.

I want to take that second one off you right now, before we go anywhere near a verse.

Hands are a legitimate way for a man to grieve. It is not a lesser way, it is not avoidance, and it is not evidence that you have not felt it. Some people talk. Some people go quiet and do things with their hands. Both of those are people in the same amount of pain.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart

There is a line in a psalm that is very short and does not try to explain anything, which is why I want it here.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18, King James Version)

The LORD is nigh.

Not the LORD will come when you have processed it. Not the LORD is nigh unto them who grieve in the correct manner. Nigh, present tense, to the broken hearted, with no method attached and no description of what the grieving is supposed to look like.

You are close to God right now in a garage with a chisel, and Psalm 34:18 attaches His nearness to the broken heart rather than to any way of carrying it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a single line from an old song and lays it down beside a small unfinished box.

And notice what is not required. There is no correct posture in that verse. No words. Nobody in it is talking.

You have a nearness that was never conditioned on how you handle it, and it is already settled in the written word that the broken heart is the whole qualification. His Spirit is the one who says that over a man who has been wondering whether he is doing this wrong.

The purpose can stay blank

Now let me deal with the box itself, because leaving the question open is the actual instruction tonight.

You do not have to decide what it is for. Not this week, not this month.

It might end up holding something. It might end up holding nothing and sitting on a shelf. It might get given away, or put in a cupboard, or never finished at all, and every one of those is a legitimate ending and none of them has to be chosen tonight.

You are near to God in exactly the state you are in, and Psalm 34:18 attaches that nearness to a broken heart and to nothing else. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in a garage with a man who cannot name what he is making.

The reason that matters is this. If you decide now, you decide from inside the worst weeks of your life, and a decision made there tends to be a decision about the pain rather than about the box.

So leave it blank. Keep working. The purpose is allowed to arrive late or never.

You are not obliged to name it, and heaven has never once required a grieving man to state his intentions. Psalm 34:18 says the LORD is nigh without asking a single question, and the Spirit of God is the one who sits with something unfinished and unnamed.

And I want to say a word about your wife, because it is in the room. She may be grieving in a way that looks nothing like this. That is not a comparison and it is not a competition. Two people can be in the same loss and reach for completely different things, and neither of them is doing it properly, because there is no properly.

You have a way of grieving that is yours, and this is yours to keep: the verse names the heart and never the method. It is written in Psalm 34:18 that He saveth such as be of a contrite spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the one who refuses to grade one person's grief against another's.

Twenty minutes, and the purpose stays blank

So here is the ask, and it is small, and there is a condition on it.

This week, do twenty minutes on the box.

And do not decide what it is for. Not at the bench, not afterward, and not if somebody asks. If somebody asks, it is entirely acceptable to say that you do not know yet.

You have permission to leave a purpose blank, and it is already settled in Psalm 34:18 that nothing had to be named for God to come near. The Spirit of God is the one who sits with something unfinished and unexplained on a bench.

Do not finish it. If it is close to finished, do something else to it, or slow down, or work on the lid for twenty minutes without fitting it. Finishing it would force the question and the question is not due.

And do not do it well. I know it is coming out better than your usual work and I know why. Let one part of it go wrong on purpose if you can, and if you cannot, that is fine too.

You are held in twenty minutes over an unfinished box, and Psalm 34:18 is the ground under that. The written word puts God near the broken hearted with no conditions written anywhere in the sentence, and the Spirit of God is present in a garage where a man is working on something he cannot name.