The Coat I Cannot Put In A Bag

You have got quite far with the rest of it.

That is the thing nobody notices about you. Two years ago you went through a great deal and you were sensible and steady about most of it, and a lot of things found their way on and you were all right.

And there is one coat on a hook by the door.

It is not even a good coat. There is a mark on the sleeve and the lining has gone at the shoulder and nobody in this house is ever going to wear it again.

You have taken it off the hook twice. Both times you put it back within about a minute, and the second time you sat on the stairs afterward for longer than you would tell anybody.

And what bothers you most is not that you cannot move it. It is that you cannot explain why this one. You handled harder things than a coat. You have been sensible about items that mattered far more and this one has you completely stopped.

So today is not about moving it. Let me say that at the top and mean it: the coat stays on the hook, today and for as long as it takes and possibly forever.

What I want is for you to stop needing a reason, because the search for the reason is doing more to you than the coat ever has.

He took up the mantle that fell

There is a moment in second Kings that happens immediately after a loss, and what the man does is pick up a piece of clothing.

He took up also the mantle of Elijah that fell from him, and went back, and stood by the bank of Jordan. (2 Kings 2:13, King James Version)

Elisha had just watched the person who mattered most to him go. And in the middle of that, the text records him doing one specific physical thing with his hands.

He picked up the coat. Not as a keepsake and not as a sentimental gesture. He picked it up and carried it and it was the right thing to do, and the narrative treats it as entirely natural.

You are doing something a prophet did in a moment of loss, and picking up a coat has never once been a strange thing to do with grief. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman sitting on the stairs after putting a coat back, and Second Kings 2:13 has a man take up a garment that fell and carry it.

And here is the part that speaks to your particular trouble.

Nobody in that passage asks Elisha to justify the mantle. Nobody says why that and not something else. The object comes into the story and stays in it, and the text never once pauses to explain the choice.

You are not required to account for which object it is, and no such account has ever once been asked of anybody in the text. The written word records the picking up and skips the reasoning, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman who has been interrogating her own hallway.

Why this one and not another

Now let me say the useful thing about why it is this one, and then set it down.

It is almost never the important object. It is usually the ordinary one. The good watch and the letters get handled sensibly, because those are obviously significant and the mind braces for them.

The coat on the hook was never braced for. It is just where it always was, doing what it always did, and there is no ceremony in it and no significance, and that is exactly why it is the one that cannot be touched.

You were ambushed by the ordinary one and never by the important one, and that has never once been a sign that something is wrong with you. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who handled the hard things and got stopped by a sleeve, and Second Kings 2:13 has a working garment carry the whole weight of a departure.

And this is why the search for a reason fails.

There is no reason of the kind you are looking for. There is no explanation that will make the coat make sense, because the coat is not a symbol and never was. It is the last ordinary thing, and ordinary things do not come with reasons attached.

You have been hunting for a reason that does not exist, and its absence has never once meant you are being irrational. The written word lets a man carry a coat without one word of explanation, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been trying to argue herself into sense.

What tonight actually is

So tonight is one sentence, and the coat does not leave the hook.

Pick up something you kept. It can be the coat. It can be something easier, and easier is a perfectly good choice tonight.

Say out loud why you kept it, and if the only true sentence is that you cannot put it in a bag, then that is the sentence.

You are allowed to say out loud that you cannot, and saying that has never once been an admission of anything. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing in a hallway with a sleeve in her hand, and Second Kings 2:13 records a picking up and no explanation at all.

And here is what I want you to hear about the two times you took it down.

Both of those were not failures. Both were you finding out where you actually are, which is real information and cost you nothing, and a woman who has taken a coat down twice is a woman who is in this rather than avoiding it.

You were finding out where you stand and never failing at something, and those two minutes have never once been wasted. The written word gives the carrying of a mantle its own line and no commentary, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman who sat on the stairs for longer than she admits.