He saw his name on a printed sheet in June and his first thought was that somebody had made a mistake.
That is the whole of the story and it took about a second and a half.
It was a list of the men who set up on Saturdays, pinned by the door, and his name was fourth from the top, and he has in fact set up on Saturdays for six years, and there was no error in that document of any kind.
His first thought was: somebody will notice eventually.
He is fifty eight.
He has had that thought about every list his name has ever been on. The team sheet at school. The crew at the yard where he has worked since he was twenty six and where he trains everybody who comes in. The card for his own daughter's wedding, where he was named as father of the bride, which he read twice.
It is not modesty. He would tell you plainly that he can do his job. Ask him whether he is good at what he does and you will get a straight answer with no shuffling in it.
It is that being on a list and being wanted on a list are two separate things in his mind, and he has only ever had access to the first, and so the presence of his name has always read to him as a fact about the paperwork rather than a fact about anybody's intention.
He works from the assumption that inclusion is provisional and unnoticed and will one day be reviewed.
He has never told anyone this. There is nothing to tell. It is not a crisis and it does not stop him doing a thing, and he would find the whole subject embarrassing if it were raised at that tailgate.
But it is there every single time, and it has been there for fifty years.
You know the thought. Yours may fire on something other than a list. But you know what it is to see evidence that you are included, and to have your first instinct be that the evidence is an error which has not yet been caught.
Not a listing anybody can correct
Let me name the pit before we get to the Psalm, because if this turns into an article telling you that you are valued you will hear it as the sort of thing people say and it will slide right off, and you would be right about the sliding.
You are covered by His own act, and you were never an entry that somebody could amend. Psalm 91:4 makes the covering His and the shield His truth, and it is the Holy Spirit who covers, and there is no clerk in that passage anywhere.
The pit is that everything you have ever been given has come to you in a form that could be revoked by an administrator. A sheet by a door. A roster. A card. All of those are real and all of them can be reprinted next month with one line different, and you have never once had anything that was not of that kind.
So when you come to God, the only category you own is the revocable one, and you have quietly filed the whole thing there, and waited fifty years for the review.
Here is the verse.
He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.Psalm 91:4
Read who does what in that sentence.
He shall cover. Not you shall qualify. Not your name shall appear. He covers, and the covering is His action, and there is no clerk anywhere in the verse.
Under his wings shalt thou trust. That is a place, and a man is described as being under it, which is a location and not an entry.
His truth shall be thy shield. Not a listing. Not a note in a file. A shield, which is a physical thing between a man and what is coming at him, and it is made of His truth, which does not get reprinted next month with one line different.
Read the verse before it too, because the Psalm sets this up. He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Dwelling and abiding are both words about staying, and neither of them is a word about being listed.
Take that on the tailgate, and know it is not me talking you up, it is what is written. The covering is His own action and it is not a listing anybody can correct. Psalm 91 puts every verb on His side, and it is the Holy Spirit who gets that through to a man who has been waiting fifty years for somebody to notice, and there is no administrator in the whole passage.
You are covered by something no clerk holds a pen over, and you were never entered anywhere that could be amended. Psalm 91:4 makes the covering His own act and the shield His own truth, and it is the Holy Spirit who covers, and none of that is a line on a sheet by a door.
And here I draw the line this site always draws, in the same breath. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. The feathers and the wings are one of the ways Scripture describes Him with a mother's picture beside a father's, and both are His own, and it does not make the Spirit a woman and it does not make God a goddess.
Careful in a house he owned.
You are covered by His own act and not entered on a sheet, and you were never provisional here. Psalm 91:4 says He shall cover thee with His feathers and His truth shall be thy shield and buckler, and there is no administrator anywhere in it, and it is the Holy Spirit who covers, which does not get reprinted next month.
That is where fifty years of waiting for the review can go, and it can go on an ordinary evening on a tailgate with the light going long across the grass.
Because the carefulness is not the problem. You are a careful man and it has made you good at your work and it has made you the one they put with the new lads, and God is not asking you to become careless.
The problem is what the carefulness has been about. It has been the carefulness of a man who thinks his position is provisional, in a place where nothing is provisional, and it has cost you fifty years of nails not put in walls.
He covers you Himself, and that is not an entry on a sheet that can be reprinted. That is Psalm 91:4 read exactly as it stands, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a man stop bracing for a review, and He is not going to do it by putting your name on a better list.
And I am not going to tell you that the list by the door means more than it does. It is a roster and rosters do get reprinted, and you are not wrong about how the world works, and this article is not going to pretend otherwise.
What is different is not the roster. It is that there is one place where you were never on a list at all, because there is no list there, and there never was, and the covering was His own doing from the start.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the tailgate. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over fifty years of waiting for a review is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on your feeling settled tonight. These stand on what is written in the Psalm and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by any sheet by any door. What He does with the bracing, and when, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- First thought I have when I see my own name, you say clerical error, and I put you down in the name of Jesus. Psalm 91:4 says He shall cover thee with His feathers, and every verb in it belongs to Him.
- Fifty years of waiting for somebody to notice and take it back, there is no administrator anywhere in that passage. It is written that His truth shall be thy shield and buckler, and His Spirit is the one who covers, which is not an entry that gets reprinted next month.
- Lord, You are neither male nor female, and You cover like a bird covers with her feathers. I read this verse out loud and I stay where I am for a minute, and when the checking starts I am not following it.
Psalm 91:4
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