Nobody Knows What To Do About The Chair

There is a chair and nobody has said one word about it.

The date is coming and there has been a great deal of practical conversation. Times, and who is bringing what, and whether somebody is driving. All of it necessary and none of it touching the only question that anybody is actually thinking about.

Which is: what happens where he used to sit.

Nobody will raise it. You know that with total certainty. It will be avoided in every conversation between now and the morning itself, and then somebody will be putting things on the table and the question will arrive physically, with people in the room, and it will have to be answered in about four seconds by whoever is standing nearest.

And you have decided, without ever deciding it, that this is yours to solve.

You have been working on it for weeks. There is a version where you set the place and it is unbearable. A version where you do not and somebody notices and it is worse. A version where you rearrange the whole table so that the question does not arise, which is clever, and which several people will see through.

Let me say something before anything else. Nobody gave you that job.

And before anything else again: if the weeks since have taken you past what a person can hold, 988 is a crisis line and it is answered, and a doctor, a counselor or a pastor you trust is a lawful room to take it into. Nothing written here is a substitute for a qualified person.

At my table continually

There is a sentence about a place at a table that is one of the warmest things in the Old Testament.

And David said unto him, Fear not: for I will surely shew thee kindness for Jonathan thy father's sake, and will restore thee all the land of Saul thy father; and thou shalt eat bread at my table continually. (2 Samuel 9:7, King James Version)

At my table continually. It is said to Mephibosheth, who is lame and who expected to be killed, and it establishes a standing place at a king's table for a man who could not have earned one.

And the word continually is doing the work. Not for a season. Not when convenient. A place that is his, held, as a permanent arrangement.

What I want you to notice is that a kept place at a table is a thing Scripture treats as an act of love rather than as a morbid gesture. There is nothing strange in it. It is what people do who intend somebody to belong.

You have permission for any of the available options, and Scripture treats a place at a table as a warm thing rather than a grim one. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the strangeness out of a kept place, and it is written into 2 Samuel 9:7 that a table can hold a standing place for somebody as an act of kindness.

And it is equally true that no verse anywhere requires it.

You were never under an instruction here, and the Holy Spirit is present at a table set either way. 2 Samuel 9:7 shows one man's kindness rather than a rule for everybody, and the written word never once prescribes what a grieving household does about a chair.

Why it was never yours

Now let me take the job off you, because it is the main thing costing you.

The reason it has been solved alone is that noticing things early is what you do. That is a real capacity and it is why the household runs. The thing comes into view long before anybody else sees it, and a lifetime has gone on heading things off before they become moments.

So the chair registered, in about September, and you began work on it, and nobody else in that family has had a single difficult thought about it since, because they do not know it is coming.

You were carrying a question that belongs to more than one person, and 2 Samuel 9:7 is one man speaking his decision out loud to another. The Spirit of God is present with a woman who has been quietly solving something on everybody's behalf, and Scripture puts a decision about a table in the hands of a household rather than in one person's private planning.

And here is why solving it alone will not work, however good your answer is.

Whatever you decide, some people in that room will have wanted the other thing. And because it was decided privately, they will not experience it as a family decision. They will experience it as something that was done, and they will have feelings about it that they cannot voice, because it is a chair and nobody can object to a chair.

You will have absorbed a shared question, made a private ruling, and handed everybody a result they had no part in.

You are able to hand it back rather than rule on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a question from one person's head into a room. 2 Samuel 9:7 is spoken rather than arranged in silence, and the written word has a king say his intention about a table plainly and out loud.

Ask two people

So here is the assignment, and the not offering is the whole of it.

Ask two people what they want to do about the place at the table, and do not offer an answer first.

Two, not everybody. Two people who will actually say something rather than defer to you.

And do not lead. Not: I was thinking we might. Just the question: what do we want to do about where he sat.

You are able to ask without having a proposal ready, and Scripture puts the whole thing in speech rather than in silence. The Spirit of God is with a woman asking a question she has been answering on her own since September, and it is written into 2 Samuel 9:7 that a matter about a table was said out loud between people.

And I want to prepare you for what happens, because it is usually not what people expect.

The relief in the room will be considerable. That question has been sitting in several heads, unspoken, for weeks. When somebody finally says it out loud, the most common response is not distress. It is a kind of exhale, and then an actual conversation, and quite often somebody has an idea nobody else had thought of.

Occasionally somebody cries. That is not a failure. That is a thing that was going to happen at some point, happening now, in November, among two people, instead of on the day in front of everybody.

You are choosing where the hard moment happens, and the Holy Spirit carries a household better through a question asked in November than through one that arrives at a table. The written word puts it in the open rather than in one person's arrangements, and 2 Samuel 9:7 records a kindness about a table stated openly to the person concerned.