The Man Who Stacked The Chairs

Ninety four chairs. Eight to a stack, twelve stacks, and the last one is six, and they go against the wall by the fire door in an order he worked out years ago so the trolley fits past.

He can do it in eleven minutes on his own. He has done it in nine.

Nine years of Wednesdays. He is always the last out. He has a key. He turns the heaters down, checks the urn, gets the lights, and stands for a second in the dark hall the way you do, and then locks up and goes home.

Nobody in that building has a single complaint about him. He would come if he had flu. He has come with flu.

Here is what he noticed a few weeks ago, and he noticed it in the car park with the keys already in his hand.

He was quicker than he used to be, and he was enjoying it a great deal less.

That is all. That is the whole event. It is not a crisis, he has not fallen out with anybody, nothing has been said. But somewhere behind the perfectly functioning hands there is a thing that used to be warm and has gone slightly flinty, and he can feel the edge of it when somebody stays late and wants to talk while he is trying to get the chairs done.

He does not like that about himself. He has not mentioned it. What would you even say?

If you know that feeling, put the trolley down a minute and come and sit on the end of a table. Nobody is going to ask you to examine yourself.

Guard the heart is not an instruction to inspect it

There is a verse everybody knows and almost everybody hears as homework.

Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life.Proverbs 4:23

Most people read that and picture a man with a clipboard walking around inside himself looking for faults, and then they feel tired, and then they do nothing, because who has the energy.

But the word behind keep there is the word you would use for a man guarding something valuable, and the picture in the second half of the verse is not an inspection at all. It is a spring. Water coming up out of the ground. The thing being guarded is a source, and the reason you guard a source is that everything downstream comes from it, and the guarding is protection rather than suspicion.

Nobody stands over a spring with a clipboard. You keep the leaves out of it, and you keep the animals off it, and you do not let anybody build anything on top of it. That is the whole job.

You are not being asked to audit yourself, and you never were. Proverbs 4:23 hands you a spring to protect rather than a self to interrogate, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the protecting from the inside, which is exactly why nine years of faithful hands have not required a single inspection to stay faithful.

Something going hard is not a verdict on you

Now the other half, and I want to say this carefully because a man in a car park with his keys in his hand is quick to conclude the worst about himself.

A thing that has gone slightly flinty is not a sin you have committed. It is far more often a season you have been carrying. Nine years of Wednesdays is a long time to be the last one out of a building. Bodies get tired and hearts do the same thing, and the hardening you can feel at the edges is usually the callus that grows over a place that has been used a great deal, not evidence that you have gone wrong somewhere.

Scripture has a promise about exactly that, and it is not addressed to people who have failed.

Ezekiel says God gives a heart of flesh in place of a heart of stone, and He says it as something He does rather than something a person achieves. You have a God who deals with the inside Himself, and He deals with it as a gift rather than as a punishment. Ezekiel 36:26 is written as a promise in the first person, I will give, and it is His Spirit put within you in the very next verse who does the softening, which means nothing about your inner life is your project to fix alone.

So here is the move, and it is smaller than you think. You are not going to resolve to feel differently. That has never worked for anybody and it is not what is on offer.

You are going to hand one thing over.

You have somewhere to put this, and you are allowed to put it there tonight. 1 Peter 5:7 says to cast your anxiety on Him because He cares for you, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a real transaction rather than a sentiment, so the flinty edge you found in the car park has an address and it is not your own chest.

And behind all of it, the thing this whole site stands on: God is keeping your heart while you keep watch over it. You are not standing guard over yourself alone in an empty hall.