The Board He Sanded Twice

The board is a length of pine about four feet long, and it has been smooth since ten o'clock, and it is a quarter past one.

Saturday, the workshop at the end of the yard, the doors wide open because the weather is finally worth it. Sawdust hanging in the light in that way it does. The radio is on the shelf where it has always been, playing something he is not listening to. He is making a shelf for the back bedroom, which his wife asked for in April and which will take an afternoon, and it has been three Saturdays.

He started at 120 grit, which was right. He moved to 180, which was right. He went to 220, which was fine. Then he went to 320, which is not for pine and does nothing except make a man feel like he is still working. His thumb has been over that same eighteen inches of board about four hundred times.

The call comes Tuesday. Somebody is going to pick up a phone in an office and say a sentence, and there are two general shapes the sentence can take, and he has now said both of them out loud, in this workshop, with the sander switched off, in a voice that was not quite his own. He has rehearsed the good one twice and the other one considerably more, because he has an idea that if he can get out ahead of it, it will not be able to land on him cold.

Saturday. Sunday. Monday. That is what is between here and there. Three days, and a board that was finished before lunch.

That is you, perhaps, in your own workshop, or your own kitchen, or your own car in the parking lot with the engine off. Your hands have found something to do and your head has not. And nobody has told you anything yet, and the not knowing has turned out to be its own kind of work.

Three days of the same board

First, the thing I am not going to do, and I want you to see me refuse it.

I am not going to guess Tuesday. Not the good shape and not the other one. I do not know, nobody writing anything anywhere knows, and a man who tells you he has a feeling about your phone call has handed you a coin flip with a Bible verse taped to it. Everything on this page has to be worth the same to you on Wednesday whichever sentence you heard, or it is not worth anything today.

So let us talk about Saturday, which is the part you actually have.

Here is what the rehearsing is. It is not weakness and it is not unbelief and it is certainly not a failure of peace. It is your mind trying to pre-live the worst so that it arrives secondhand. It is a strategy, and it is a smart one, and it does not work, and you know it does not work because you have run it four hundred times over eighteen inches of pine and you are no readier than you were at ten.

You are not failing at peace because your hands need something to do. 1 Peter 5:7 does not tell a worried man to feel differently; it tells him to throw something, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a sentence written to scattered people land in a workshop with the doors open.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.1 Peter 5:7

You have three days that belong to God every bit as much as Tuesday does. That is written into the shape of the verse itself, which is addressed to the middle of things and not to the resolution of them, and His Spirit is the one who holds a Saturday open rather than making you skip to the end of it.

Casting, which is a throw and not a mood

Look at the word Peter chose, because it is doing more than English usually lets it.

Casting is not setting down gently. It is not sighing. It is a throw. It is the same word Luke uses for the coats the disciples threw onto the colt before Jesus rode it into the city. You take the thing off yourself and you put it onto something else that is going to carry it, and then it is on the other thing and not on you.

That is an action. You can perform an action while feeling nothing at all, and this matters more than anything else on this page, because nobody in your situation feels peaceful on demand and every attempt to make you is cruelty dressed as ministry. You are not asked to summon a mood. You are asked to throw.

And notice why. For he careth for you. That is the whole reason given. Not because it works, not because worry is a sin you owe an apology for. Because He cares. The throw makes sense only because there is somebody on the other end of it who is not strained by the weight and who has already been paying attention to you all week.

Right now, as you read, the care you have been carrying is a throwable thing, and it lands on somebody it does not cost anything to hold. 1 Peter 5:7 is where that comes from, and it is His Spirit, not the strength of your arm, that makes the throw a real transaction.

Now the honest thing, and it goes here, at the point where you are most likely to want a promise. God heals. He heals bodies, and Scripture says it too plainly for me to soften it, and this site was built to say it in daylight rather than mumble it. And I do not promise you the result, not on Tuesday, not on any day. We say what He said and we leave the current to Him. And if the sentence you hear is the other one, that is not a verdict on your faith or your Saturday or how many times you threw it. Nobody here failed to have enough faith. That sentence is not in the book, it is not true, and it does not get to come into the workshop.

Nor does any of this stand against the people making the call. Keep the appointment. Answer the phone. The God you are throwing this onto is not in competition with them and never was.

Dread that has been rehearsing Tuesday since Thursday has no right to stay. It is written that He cares for you, in the present tense, on a Saturday with nothing decided, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a fact rather than a slogan on a workshop wall.

And one more thing, said plainly. If these three days have taken you somewhere darker than tired, if the rehearsing has turned into wondering whether you want to be here for the answer, tell one human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit with you through tonight. A page cannot sit with you. You deserve somebody who can.