The north fence went down in the ice storm two winters ago and it is still down.
That is about a hundred and sixty yards of wire lying in the grass with the posts leaning over it, and any man who has ever run cattle will tell you what that looks like, and what it looks like is a man who has stopped.
He has not stopped. He is up at five and he works until it is dark, and everything else on that place is done. It is only the north fence, and he could not tell you why, and he has quit trying to work it out.
The boy died in the March after the ice. Twenty six. It was not the farm that did it and it was not anything anybody could have seen coming, and he is not going to say any more about it than that.
The place went in the fall. Not all at once. The way it goes, which is a bank and a lawyer and four meetings and then a signature, and he leases eighty acres back now from a man in another state who has never seen it.
So that is the year. The boy in March and the place in October.
And every man in this county has said a version of the same sentence to him, and they have said it kindly, and they have said it about a hundred and fifty times between them.
It comes back around. Farming is cycles. Give it three good years. My daddy lost a place in 1981 and look at us now. It comes back to a man, son, in one way or another.
They believe it. Most of them have to.
And the truth is that it is not coming back around, not the eighty acres and not the boy, and he knows both of those with the same certainty, and there is not one man on this road he can say that to without watching their face do something.
If that is a fence anybody has been walking past for two winters, come and sit on the bucket. There is a sentence in Job that is as flat as this and it is in Scripture.
The flattest sentence in the book
Here it is. And I want you to notice what is not attached to it.
Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.Job 1:21
That sentence is said by a man on the day he lost ten children and everything he owned.
Now here is the part almost nobody notices, and it is the whole reason this verse is any use out here. Job says that on day one. And then the book runs forty more chapters, and in all of those chapters he never once gets an explanation, and when God finally speaks out of the whirlwind He does not give him one either.
Not a reason. Not a purpose. Not a lesson. Forty chapters and God never says why.
So whatever that verse is, it is not a man who has been told something. It is a man stating where he is, with nothing in his hand, and refusing to curse.
You are permitted to state it flat and to leave it there, and you were never obliged to attach a meaning to the year. Job 1:21 is the written word letting a man say the plain thing with no explanation anywhere in the book that follows, and the Holy Spirit is the one who left forty chapters of silence on the question of why.
That is the permission you have not been given by a single man on this road. Not permission to give up. Permission to say the thing accurately without something hopeful bolted on the end of it.
You have been telling the truth rather than losing heart, and you were never faithless for knowing what a signature means. Job 1:21 states a total loss without one syllable of forecast, and the Spirit of God is not out here waiting for a man to predict a recovery.
Why the county says it comes back around
Now let me stand up for those men, because you have to buy hay from them and sit next to them at a sale barn.
Every one of them is holding the same thing, at a distance of about half a mile, and they cannot hold it.
A farm going under is the specific fear of every man in that county. When it happens to somebody, it walks up close to all of them at once. And the only way most people can look at a thing that close is to put a future on it, because a future makes it survivable.
It comes back around is not really a statement about you. It is a man in a truck telling himself that the ground he is standing on will hold.
That is not dishonesty and it is not cheap. It is what people do.
And you cannot correct it, and you should not try, because it would cost you the county and it would not straighten one strand of wire.
Right now, as you read this, you are known by one who never once forecasts to make Himself easier to stand next to, and you were never handed a future to keep somebody else steady. Job 1:21 has no prediction in it anywhere, and His Spirit has been out on that north line every evening for two winters.
The comfort has to be able to sit on the ground
Here is the center of this and it is the reason the page exists.
There is a kind of comfort that is a bet. It says: hold on, because it turns. That comfort is worth exactly as much as the odds behind it, and out here the odds are not good, and a man who has read a bank's letter knows it.
The comfort in Scripture is not a bet.
Look at what is actually offered. The Lord is near to them of a broken heart. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee. My grace is sufficient for thee. Not one of those says the water goes down. Every one of them puts a Person in the position and leaves the position alone.
That is comfort you can sit on a bucket with, because it does not need the eighty acres and it does not need March undone.
You are comforted inside a thing that is not turning, and you were never given a promise with a harvest attached to it. Isaiah 43:2 puts Him with a man in the water rather than promising dry ground, and the Holy Spirit does not require a fence to be back up before He will be in a pasture.
So here is where this leaves you, on a bucket, with the light going out of the west.
The God who is out there is not offering you the eighty acres. He has not said He will, and this page is not going to say it for Him, because a promise nobody made is the most expensive thing anybody can hand a man in your position.
What He is offering is Himself, in the pasture, with the wire where it is.
And He knows the ground. When He came here He was a working man in a small country under an occupation, and He owned nothing, and He was buried in another man's tomb. He is not a God who has only ever looked at this from a truck window.
You are sat with on that bucket by that same Christ, and you were sat with in March and again in October. Job 1:21 lets a man state a total loss with no explanation given anywhere after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been on that north line for two winters.
And I am not going to tell you the weight lifts by spring. Comfort is His to give, in His own way and His own timing, and a fence still down next winter is not a verdict on your faith or on how hard you have worked.
But there is a second weight and it comes off tonight. You have carried an accusation that was never true, that a man who will not predict a recovery has quit on God. Job 1 stands in the written word as the permanent answer to it, and the Holy Spirit has never once made a forecast the price of company.
If the weight ever turns dangerous out here, and staying safe genuinely comes into question for you, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor the plain truth about the evenings. Getting another human being physically near you is not weakness and it is not a failure of faith. It is one honest way of refusing to be alone in a pasture, and there is no shame in it anywhere.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the bucket, with the light going and nobody on the road. The authority to speak to what has been sitting on you since the ice was given to you in Christ, and it does not rise or fall with how much you feel this evening. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it. And whatever He does with the ache afterward is His to decide, in His own way and His own timing.
- Promise that it comes back around, you are not comfort and you were never asked to be. Job 1:21 states a total loss with no forecast attached and the forty chapters after it never give a reason, and I stop nodding at a future nobody can hand me.
- Idea that saying it plain is quitting, get out in the name of Jesus. The written word let a man say the flat thing on the worst day of his life and never once corrected him, and the Comforter has never required a prediction before He would come out here.
- Lord, You were a working man who owned nothing and was buried in another man's tomb, as Matthew 27:60 says of the borrowed grave. I thank You that You come into the pasture as it stands, and I am saying out loud that it cannot be undone and that You are out here with me in it.
Job 1:21
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