There Are Only Two People I Would Give It To

Two. Your sister and Ruth.

That is the list. Everybody else gets shop bought, and you are good at shop bought, and nobody has ever suspected anything.

And here is the thing that has started to bother you, which is not the shortness of the list.

It is that it used to have five people on it.

There was the woman at work. She came off after a Christmas where she said something perfectly nice in a slightly flat tone and you thought about it for a week. There was your cousin, who put it in a drawer while you were still standing there. And there was your neighbor, and you cannot even remember what happened with her, only that at some point you knew she was off.

Nobody did anything cruel. Not one of those three did anything anybody would call unkind.

They failed to be safe enough, on one occasion, by a very small margin, and that was all.

And the list works the way lists like that always work. Things come off it and nothing goes back on. There is no process for restoring somebody, because the only thing that would restore them is exactly the thing you would have to risk in order to find out.

So it shortens. A person a year, roughly. And on the current trajectory you can do the arithmetic yourself.

The fear of man bringeth a snare

There is a proverb about fear that names it in a way most people do not expect, because it does not sound like fear from the inside.

The fear of man bringeth a snare: but whoso putteth his trust in the LORD shall be safe. (Proverbs 29:25, King James Version)

The fear of man bringeth a snare.

A snare is not a wall. A wall stops you and you know it is there. A snare is a small hidden thing that catches a foot, and the animal in it does not usually know how it got there.

That is a precise description of a list that has quietly gone from five to two without anybody deciding anything.

And notice the word man. Not danger. Not failure. The fear is of people, of their reactions, of what a face might do, and it is named as the thing that sets the trap.

You are caught in something that was described three thousand years ago, and Proverbs 29:25 calls the fear of people a snare rather than an ordinary caution. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a proverb about a hidden trap and lays it down on a list with two names on it.

And notice the contrast. Whoso putteth his trust in the LORD. Not whoso becomes braver, not whoso stops caring what people think, which nobody has ever managed. The alternative offered is a place to put your trust rather than a feeling to acquire.

You have somewhere else to put your trust, and it is already settled in the written word that the way out is a placing rather than a becoming. His Spirit is the one who says whoso putteth his trust over a woman who has been shortening a list for years.

Nobody has ever been restored

Now let me look at the mechanism, because it is the mechanism that will take the list to zero.

Coming off the list requires one small ambiguous moment.

Going back on requires a good reaction to a gift.

You are caught in something Scripture named three thousand years ago, and Proverbs 29:25 calls the fear of man a snare rather than ordinary caution. The Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a foot out of a trap nobody built on purpose.

But a person who is off the list will never receive a gift, so they cannot produce a good reaction, so they can never come back on. The system has an exit and no entrance.

And it will not stop at two, because your sister will have an off day eventually, and Ruth will be distracted one Christmas, and the same small mechanism will run.

And this: how somebody reacted is not a measure of what you made, and it is certainly not a measure of you. A flat tone at a Christmas is a fact about a Christmas. People are tired, people are elsewhere, people are worrying about something in the next room.

You are not reading people accurately, and heaven has never once made a reaction the evidence you have taken it for. Proverbs 29:25 calls the whole arrangement a snare, and the Spirit of God is the one who names a trap that nobody meant to build.

And do not go back to all three at once. That is not courage, that is a project, and it would fail and prove the wrong thing.

You have permission to put one name back, and this is yours: the trusting is a placing and it can be done in one small act. It is written in Proverbs 29:25 that the fear of man bringeth a snare, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a foot out of one.

One person off the list this week

So here is the ask.

This week, give one thing you made to somebody who is not on the list.

Not the hardest one. Not the cousin, if the cousin is the hardest. Whichever of the three is nearest to the edge, or somebody entirely new, which is easier because they have no history in this.

Small. Twenty minutes of making, so that nothing enormous is riding on it.

You have somewhere else to put your trust, and Proverbs 29:25 offers a placing rather than a courage a person has to manufacture. The Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a foot out of a snare nobody meant to build.

And decide in advance that whatever the reaction is, they stay on the list. That is the actual exercise. A flat tone does not remove anybody. A drawer does not remove anybody. Only a genuine unkindness would, and there almost certainly will not be one.

Hand it over and say nothing about it and then go about your afternoon.

You are covered while you hand something to somebody unsafe, and Proverbs 29:25 is the ground under that. The written word offers a placing of trust rather than a feeling of courage, and the Spirit of God is present in a kitchen where a woman is handing something across to somebody who came off a list four years ago.