The List Is Full Of Other People

Go down the list and put a name against each one.

The gate is for your wife, because she asked about it twice in the spring. The shelf is for your daughter. The thing in the garage is for your brother, who is storing something there. The two in the back room are for the people who came at Christmas and are coming again.

Nine items. Nine names. None of them yours.

And that is not a complaint, and this article is not going to make it into one, because every one of those is a good reason and you would not take any of them off.

Here is the observation, and it is neutral before it is anything else. A list made entirely of what a man owes to other people is a list with no entry point for the man himself. He is the one doing all of it and he does not appear anywhere on it.

And a person who is not on their own list is easy to spend, because there is no line item to run out of.

You are a man who belongs on his own list, and a page made entirely of other people has never once been a complete account of a house.

Come ye yourselves apart

There is a moment in Mark where a group of people who have been working hard get sent somewhere, and the detail of who noticed is the part that matters.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. (Mark 6:31, King James Version)

Come ye yourselves apart.

Yourselves. The word is in there deliberately and it is doing the work of this whole article. Not come and do a thing for somebody. Come yourselves, which puts the people in question on the receiving end of the instruction for once.

And nobody asked. The passage does not record anybody raising it. They had not complained and they had not requested anything, and the instruction arrives from outside.

You have an instruction that arrives without anybody asking for it, and a man who has not requested anything has never once been outside the notice of the one who gave it. Mark 6:31 puts the word yourselves in the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is capable of seeing a man who is not on his own list.

And look at the reason attached. For there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.

The reason given is traffic. Other people arriving and leaving. It is not a criticism of anybody and it is not about the workers being weak, it is a plain observation about volume, and the volume was not their doing.

You were never being assessed when that was noticed, and traffic that nobody in the room created has never once been a report on the people standing in it. The Spirit of God is the one who counts the coming and going, and the written word names the volume rather than naming a fault.

A list with no line for the man on it

So here is the practical claim, and it is arithmetic before it is anything else.

A list is a budget. It is the whole account of where the available hours are going. And a budget with no line for one party is a budget in which that party gets whatever is left, which over time is nothing, because there is never anything left.

That is not a character flaw and nobody decided it. It is what happens to any category that has no line on a page.

You have a budget with no line for the man spending it, and a category with no entry has never once been a category anybody could allocate to. Mark 6:31 says come ye yourselves, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a man back into an account he has been running from outside.

And here is the second thing, and it is the part that makes this difficult rather than obvious.

Adding an item for yourself feels like taking something from somebody else. Nine names are on that page and a tenth line with your own on it appears, to you, to be competing with them.

It is not competing with them. It is the line that makes the other nine sustainable, because the man doing all nine has to be resourced from somewhere, and nowhere is not a place.

You are not taking anything from anybody by appearing on your own page, and a line for the man doing the work has never once been a line taken off somebody else. The Spirit of God is the one who sent people apart while the crowd was still there, and Mark 6:31 records the leaving without one word of apology to anybody.

And one more, and it is about where the line goes.

You have a place above the others available for it, and the bottom of a list has never once been a place where anything gets reached. Mark 6:31 has them going apart while the coming and going was still happening, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that ordering possible.

Add one for yourself, and put it above the others

Here is the assignment and the position on the page is the whole of it.

Add one item to the list that is only for you.

Something in the house that nobody else has asked for and nobody else will particularly notice. The thing you would do if the list were finished. It does not have to be large and it probably is not.

You have one thing in that house that belongs to nobody but you, and an item with your own name on it has never once been a selfish item. Mark 6:31 says come ye yourselves apart, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that table while a man writes himself onto his own page.

And then put it above the others. Not at the bottom.

This is the part that will feel wrong and it is the part that does the work. At the bottom it is a wish. Above the others it is a line item, and line items get reached.

You have a line that needs no reason written beside it, and the other nine have never once carried one either. So do not justify it on the page. Mark 6:31 sent people apart without recording one word of explanation to anybody, and the Spirit of God is the one at that table while it stands unexplained.

Then put the pen down and do nothing about it tonight. The line is the assignment.