He Still Walks Past the Shop

Sami left the shop in March.

He had been there since he was nineteen and he is thirty-four. It was his uncle's and then it was his uncle's son's, and what happened at the end was not dramatic and does not matter here except that Sami finally said no, and packed his things into two boxes, and took a job at a distribution center on the other side of the city that pays properly and has a schedule and a person in an office who says good morning.

By every measure a person could apply, this is a good outcome.

Here is what Sami does.

His route home from the bus is fifteen minutes. There is a way that takes twenty-two minutes and goes down the old street. He takes the twenty-two-minute way probably four nights a week. He does not go in. He does not stop. He walks past on the opposite side, at about eight in the evening, and he looks at whether the lights are on and whether the shutter is up and how many crates are still out, and then he keeps walking and goes home and eats his dinner.

He has never told anyone. There is nobody to tell it to who would not immediately be worried about him, and the strange part is that Sami is not worried about himself, he is just faintly embarrassed, in the way you are embarrassed by a habit you would not be able to defend.

If you asked him why he does it he would probably say he does not know, and that would be true. If you pressed him, he might get as far as: I want to see whether it still works without me. And then, if you pressed harder, which nobody has: I want to see whether anything happened to them because I left.

Here is the evening it caught.

He came past and the shutter was down at eight, which it never is, and everything in him went cold and stayed cold for about four seconds until he saw the note taped to it about a family wedding.

And he stood there on the other side of the street, thirty-four years old, with his heart going, over a shop he does not work at, and thought: what am I doing out here.

You have a version of this. Something you left that you still drive past, look up, check on, search for. And you would not be able to explain it if somebody asked, and you have therefore never given anybody the chance.

The pillar changed position

Let me put down what I am not doing tonight, so you can stop bracing.

I am not going to tell you what your leaving was or whether it was right. I do not know your family and I am not going to give you a verdict on any of them. I am not going to tell you to stop walking past, or to walk past more, or to go in, or to never go in. That is not a thing a page can see.

What I will do is show you one verse in Exodus 14 that people read straight over because they are hurrying toward the sea.

Israel is out. They left in chapter twelve. And in chapter fourteen the chariots come after them and the people panic on the shore, and in the middle of the panic this happens:

And the angel of God, which went before the camp of Israel, removed and went behind them; and the pillar of the cloud went from before their face, and stood behind them.Exodus 14:19

The pillar moves.

For the whole of the leaving it was in front, leading. And the moment the danger is behind them rather than ahead of them, it goes and stands behind them. Same pillar. Different position. Because the threat had changed direction and so did the covering.

You are covered from the direction you keep turning around to look at, and that covering has its own verse rather than being an inference from something else. Exodus 14:19 has the pillar deliberately taking up position at the rear, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries that off the page and onto a street at eight in the evening.

And notice the next verse: it came between the camp of the Egyptians and the camp of Israel, and it was a cloud and darkness to them but it gave light by night to these. The same thing that is dark to what is behind you is light to you. It is not a wall you have to hold up. It is a position somebody else took.

You have never once been responsible for guarding your own back, and the whole of Exodus 14 is God moving to a position no one asked Him to take. It is written that the pillar went from before their face and stood behind them, and the Holy Spirit is what makes an ancient repositioning a present fact.

Looking back is not going back

Now let me be careful, because this is where a message like this gets clumsy and hurts a decent man.

There is a way of preaching about looking back that leans on Lot's wife and turns a habit into an indictment, and I am not going to do that to you. Sami is not longing to return. He is checking. Those are different actions and they come from different places, and conflating them is how people end up ashamed of something that is closer to loyalty than to relapse.

What is he actually doing on that street? He is confirming that the people he left are all right. That is what the cold four seconds were about. Not I wish I were in there. I hope nothing happened because I went.

You are not doing something disloyal to your own freedom by caring what became of the people still inside, and Scripture never treats that as a step backward. Exodus 32 has Moses interceding for a people he had every reason to walk away from, and the Holy Spirit is what keeps concern from being read as regression.

But here is what I do want to name, because it is the thing that keeps the walk going. The checking never resolves. Four nights a week for six months, and there is no piece of information that would let him stop, because what he is really trying to verify cannot be seen from the opposite side of a street. Whether they are all right in the way he means is not visible through a shutter.

You have been trying to get an answer from a window that was never going to give you one, and the answer is not being withheld, it is simply not there. Exodus 14:19 gives the rear position to God rather than to the man, and the Holy Spirit is what makes handing over a watch a real transaction rather than a resolution.

Say this now rather than later, because I would rather say it and not be needed. If the leaving has taken you somewhere darker than embarrassed, or if the checking has grown into something that runs your evenings, do not carry that alone. Tell somebody this week. A friend, your doctor, a counselor, or the 988 crisis line if you live in the United States. That is not me telling you a thing about that shop or those people. That is me refusing to leave you standing across that street on your own.