He Went First Down This Corridor

Somebody showed him this room at about eleven and said he could use the kettle, and then went away, and that was the last instruction he received.

There is a sofa that is slightly too short. A box of tissues that has clearly been here a long time. A window that does not open and a view of a flat roof with a light on it.

It is ten past two.

And the thing he keeps running into, over and over, is that he does not know how to do this. Not the emotions of it. The mechanics. Is he supposed to stay awake? Is it disrespectful to sleep? Should he ring his sister now or at six? Is he allowed to walk about? If somebody comes and he is asleep on this sofa, what will they think of him?

Fifty-two years old and he feels like a boy who has turned up somewhere without being told the rules, and underneath all of it a worse version of the same thing: I do not know how to do any of this and there is nobody to ask.

That is your relatives' room. That is your ten past two. And I want to hand you a sentence about somebody who has already been down this corridor.

Somebody has been down here already

Moses says this to a man who is about to have to do something he has never done and does not know how to do.

And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.Deuteronomy 31:8

Read the order of the three, because it is deliberate and it is not the order people usually quote.

He doth go before thee. That comes first. Not beside, not behind: ahead. Somebody has already been where you are going.

Then he will be with thee, which is the company. Then he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee, which is the durability.

You are following and not pioneering. Not the first man ever to sit in a relatives' room at ten past two with no idea of the etiquette. The written word puts God ahead of you on this corridor, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a man on a short sofa rather than leaving it as a farewell speech.

Now let me deal with the questions, because they are real questions and they deserve plain answers rather than a spiritual reframe.

You are allowed to sleep. Nobody will think anything of it, and the people who work here have seen a hundred men asleep on that sofa and thought only that somebody was tired. You are allowed to walk about. You are allowed to ring your sister at six rather than now, and you are allowed to ring her at three if you cannot bear it. There is no etiquette. Nobody is marking this.

You are not being assessed tonight. The written word says fear not, neither be dismayed, and it says it to somebody facing an unfamiliar thing, not to somebody who is performing it badly. The Holy Spirit is not standing at the back of that room with a clipboard.

And here is the part that matters most, which is what going before actually means.

It does not mean God has arranged what happens next, and this page will not tell you what happens next or hint at it. It means that the road you are on tonight is not unknown ground to Him. He has been down every hour of this kind of night with a great many people, and He knows where the difficult bits are, and He is not learning it as He goes the way you are.

You have somebody ahead of you who knows the way through. He it is that doth go before thee, and he it is is emphatic: this one, personally, Himself. The Holy Spirit is on that corridor tonight, and He arrived before eleven.