Every box has a word on it in thick black marker, and every word is the name of a room that does not exist any more.
KITCHEN. BACK BEDROOM. UNDER STAIRS. He wrote them three weeks ago in the house he was leaving, and they were accurate then. Now the van is half empty on a sidewalk he has never stood on before, the driver's mate is standing in the doorway of a place with two rooms and a corridor, holding a box that says LANDING, and he asks the only question a removal man ever needs to ask.
"Where do you want this?"
And the man on the sidewalk cannot answer him.
He can tell you exactly what he came out of. He could draw you the old house from memory, every cupboard, every noise it made at night, the exact way a certain door had to be lifted before it would shut. He could tell you what he was inside for eleven years and what it cost and what finally moved. He knows the leaving to the hour. What he does not know is anything at all about the arriving. There is no room called LANDING here. He is standing in the sun with a mug of tea somebody's neighbor handed him, and a stranger is holding his belongings, waiting for a word he has not got.
He says, "Anywhere. Just put it anywhere," and the man puts it down in the corridor, and it sits there like a question.
You know this sidewalk. You got out. You can name what you got out of with the precision of somebody who lived in it a long time. And every box you carried out is labeled for a life that has ended, and nobody has yet asked you a harder question than the removal man's, and nobody has to, because you have been asking it yourself since the door shut behind you: out into what?
Out was never the whole sentence
I am going to name the stage this is written for, because this site does that, and because a stage that is not named is a stage a person thinks they invented. Not still inside. Not the being brought out either; that happened. This is the stretch after the exit, where the old thing is behind and nothing ahead has a name yet, and the fear a person feels here is not ingratitude. It is what an unfilled address does to somebody.
Now hear the sentence Moses told the whole nation to teach their children, so that nobody would ever mistake the exit for the destination.
He brought us out from there, that He might bring us in, to give us the land that He swore to give to our fathers.Deuteronomy 6:23
Read the shape of it. Out, in order that in. The exodus was never a sentence that ended at the sea. God said the same thing at the burning bush before a single plague fell: I have come down to bring them out, and to bring them up into a land. Both halves in one breath, before Moses had even agreed to go. The in was named before the out was begun.
You were brought out for a destination, not for an exit. I am not saying that as an encouragement; I am saying it because it is written, in Deuteronomy, in the mouth of God at the bush, and the Holy Spirit who carried Israel in a cloud is the same Spirit who applies that sentence to a sidewalk with a van on it. Out was never the whole sentence. It has a second half, and He wrote it.
Here is what I know from keeping books for a living: an account with only a debit side is not a mistake, it is unfinished. What left is recorded. What is coming in has not been posted yet. That is not the same as nothing coming in. It is a column that God has already headed.
You are looking at an unfinished ledger rather than an empty one, and the difference is not a matter of optimism. Deuteronomy 6:23 names the second column before anybody crossed a river, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a headed column something a person can actually rest on.
You have a place with a name on it, and the name is His to say, not mine. I cannot tell you what it is. Nobody can, and anyone who tries is guessing on God's behalf. What I can tell you is what Hebrews 11:8 says of Abraham, that he went out not knowing where he was going, and it counts that as faith and not as failure. The Spirit does not shame the person on the sidewalk for having no address; He is the one who wrote the words not knowing into the record and called it obedience.
So here is what is true on your sidewalk right now, and I will not dress it up.
The old labels are accurate about the past and useless about the future, and that is exactly as it should be. God did not bring you out to leave you standing beside the van. You are already inside the second half of His sentence, even though you cannot yet read it, because His word says He brings out in order to bring in, and His Spirit is the one carrying you across the gap between those two clauses. That is not a promise about a particular life on the other side. I will not name your land for you; He named it before you left, and He does the telling.
And here is where you speak. Faith the size of the writing on one box lid is enough, spoken to a real mountain, and the mountain on this sidewalk is the blank where the destination should be. It has been telling you that blank means nothing. Speak to it. Say out loud that the blank is a line He has already headed. You are not begging the address to appear. You are telling the blank whose it is.
I do not know when the in arrives, or what shape it takes, or how many corridors the boxes sit in first. That is His to decide, and a slow in is still an in. But you were heard before the door ever opened, and the same God who heard the cry is not careless about the arrival. It is written that He finishes what He begins, and the Spirit who began it in you has not put the pen down.
Declare this over yourself
Speak these out loud, beside whatever boxes you have. The right to speak to your own sidewalk is yours because Christ is in you, and He is the one who walked out of a tomb into a morning nobody had a name for yet. Scripture is the ground under each line, and it is the Holy Spirit carrying the words, not the confidence in your voice. What He does with the corridor and the boxes after you have spoken is His to decide, in His own way and His own time, and none of it depends on your guessing the destination right.
- Boxes labeled for a house that is gone, you are not my address and you never were. Scripture says He brought us out in order to bring us in, and out was never the whole sentence.
- Blank where the destination should be, you are not nothing, you are a line God has already headed. It is written in Deuteronomy 6:23 that He brought them out in order to bring them in, and His Spirit is the one who fills that column, so in the name of Jesus I stop reading you as empty.
- Lord, You named the place before I left, and Your Spirit has not put the pen down. I thank You, because the disorientation is the receipt, and I am standing in the new place with one step written on my hand.
Deuteronomy 6:23
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