Nineteen years, and the bench is exactly as his grandfather left it.
Every tool on its outline on the board. The plane oiled. The chisels sharp, all eleven, sharpened by him personally twice a year on a Saturday. The floor swept. The window cleaned. The stove works and he lights it in November so nothing rusts.
He has never made anything in there.
Not a box, not a shelf, not a repair. He can use every tool on that wall competently, because he was taught by the man himself between the ages of six and seventeen, and he has not put a blade into wood in that building since the funeral.
He would tell you he is keeping it for his son.
His son is thirty one and lives four hours away and has been in that workshop twice in a decade and was polite about it both times.
Here is what happened in October, and it was nothing, which is how these things go.
A neighbor's daughter needed a shelf for a bird box for a school thing, one plank, twenty minutes of work, and she asked, and he said of course, and he went out to the workshop and stood in the middle of it.
And he could not do it. He got as far as taking the saw off the wall.
He put it back on its outline and drove her to a shop instead, and she got a plank, and it was fine, and she has no idea anything happened.
He sat in the truck outside afterwards.
Nineteen years of sharpening chisels twice a year for a room where nothing is ever made.
The land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me
Sit down on the stool by that bench a minute, because there is a verse in Leviticus that says exactly what you have believed for nineteen years, and then says the other half of it, and you have only ever held the first half, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept you coming back to that room.
The land shall not be sold for ever: for the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.Leviticus 25:23
The land is mine. Ye are strangers and sojourners with me.
You have that. You have had it since you were young and you have run your whole life by it, and you are right: nothing is finally yours, and you are passing through, and the workshop belonged to a man who is dead and belongs to somebody after you. That is written, and the Holy Spirit has been holding you steady in it since you were young.
Now the half you have never held, which is written into the same law, and the Holy Spirit is the one bringing it to this bench.
Every single person that verse was spoken to worked that land, and ate from it, and made wine from it, and sat under their own vine and their own fig tree, and did all of it as strangers and sojourners without one word of rebuke from anybody.
The tenancy in that verse was always a tenancy that ate the fruit.
Hear this at your own bench. You are not wrong about the ownership, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture says the land is His and calls you a sojourner in the same breath as it hands the sojourner the harvest, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put you in that room between the ages of six and seventeen with a man who used every tool on that wall daily.
Now let me name what the caretaking has become, because it started as reverence and reverence is not the wrong instinct and I will not call it that.
It has become preservation, and preservation and use are opposites.
A tool in use gets dull and gets sharpened and gets dull again and eventually gets worn past sharpening and gets replaced, and that is what a tool is for, and every one of those chisels was bought to be worn out.
A tool preserved is kept from all of that, and it stays perfect, and perfect is the condition of a thing that is not doing its work.
Hear this too, and let it stand where you took the saw off the wall. You are not honoring him by the emptiness, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts the sojourner in the field and the vineyard rather than at the gate guarding it, and the Spirit of God has never once asked a man to prove reverence by refusing to use what he was given.
And the truth about your son, since it is the reason you give when anybody asks.
He has been out there twice in ten years and he was polite about it. He is not waiting for a museum. If he ever wants that room, what would draw him to it is a father who makes things in it, and there has been nothing to walk in on for nineteen years.
You are not keeping it for him. You are keeping it, and the him is a reason that arrived afterwards, and it is a good reason and it is not the true one. The written word requires no such reason of anybody, and the Spirit of God has never asked you to guard a room instead of using it.
So this week you make something.
Small. A shelf. A box for something. The bird box shelf, if that girl still needs one, and if she does not then something else, and it does not matter what because the object is not the point.
Take the saw off the wall and do not put it back on its outline until it has cut something.
And then leave the evidence. Shavings on the floor overnight. The chisel not sharpened until next week. A pencil mark on the bench that stays there. Because the room has been in a museum condition that the man who built it never once kept it in, and the fastest way to end nineteen years is to leave a mess in it for one night.
The written word calls you a stranger and a sojourner and in the same breath puts the harvest in the sojourner's hands, and the Holy Spirit had you in that room from the age of six with a man who wore his tools out, so nothing about using it takes one thing away from anybody coming after you.
Sharpened chisels are not what he left you. He left you the use of them, and you have kept the wrong half of it beautifully for nineteen years.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at the bench with the saw in your hand. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit had you in that room from the age of six according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of keeping a room perfect. Whether your son ever wants that workshop or never does, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a man who has sharpened eleven chisels twice a year for nineteen years.
- Nineteen years of caretaking, you are not reverence and you are ending this week. Scripture says the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me, and every sojourner that was spoken to ate from the field and made wine from it.
- Preservation that has kept a room in a condition its own builder never kept it in, get off this bench, in the name of Jesus. The written word puts the sojourner in the vineyard rather than at the gate guarding it, and the Spirit of God has never asked a man to prove reverence by refusing to use what he was handed.
- Lord, You call me a stranger and a sojourner and You put the harvest in my hands in the same sentence, and Your Spirit had me in this room from the age of six, exactly as it is written. I am making one small thing this week, and the shavings are staying on the floor overnight.
Leviticus 25:23
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