I Will Not Hang Anything On The Walls

The box is marked photos and frames in your wife's handwriting and it has moved twice.

It came out of the old place four years ago and went into the spare room here, and then when your sister came to stay it went into the closet, and it is in the closet now with a suitcase on top of it.

Inside it there is the picture of your grandfather outside the shop. There is the one from the wedding, the good one, the one where your mother is laughing at something out of frame. There are the two of the children that your wife had printed properly, at a shop, because she said they deserved better than a phone.

None of them have been on a wall in four years.

And the reason you give is about the walls. It is a rental. There is a clause about fixings. You would have to make good when you leave.

That is a real clause and it is a real reason and it is not the reason.

The reason is that a man who hangs his grandfather on a wall has decided something. And you have not decided it, and you have been careful not to decide it, for four years, because the decision would be an admission.

Four years is not a while

Let me do the arithmetic out loud, because I think it has been carefully avoided in this house.

Four years. Your youngest has no memory of anywhere else. The neighbor two doors down brought soup when your wife was ill, and his gate has been fixed twice by the man in this house. You know which board on the stairs makes the noise. You know the sound the boiler makes before it does the other thing.

That is not a stopover. By any measure a person would use for anybody else, that is where you live.

You have lived four years in a place you have never let yourself call home, and time spent in a house has never once needed a deed to become a life. It is written in Jeremiah 29 that God told the exiles to build houses and dwell in them and plant gardens and eat the fruit of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who had that written to people who were definitely not staying.

And I want to name what the bare walls are for, because they are doing a job and it is not about fixings.

As long as nothing is on the walls, this is still temporary. And as long as it is temporary, the thing you actually wanted has not been given up on.

The box is not a box of pictures. It is a position.

You have been holding a position with a closet and a suitcase, and bare walls have never once kept anything alive that a decision would have killed. Jeremiah 29 tells people in a place they did not choose to plant and to eat, and the Spirit of God is the one who considered that the right instruction.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them

Here is the passage, and the situation behind it is the whole force of it.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them. (Jeremiah 29:5, King James Version)

These are exiles. They were taken from their own country to Babylon, and they did not want to be there, and they were right not to want to be there, and the whole thing was a genuine loss.

And there were prophets among them saying it would be over quickly. Two years. Do not unpack.

And God sends a letter and says: build houses. Plant gardens. Eat the fruit, which takes years to arrive. Marry, have children, let your children marry. Seek the peace of the city.

You have been given the instruction that was written for people who did not choose their address, and living fully in a place has never once been the same as giving up on another one. The Holy Spirit is the one who sent that letter rather than a different one, and the written word tells exiles to plant gardens whose fruit will take years.

And notice what it is not. It is not an instruction to stop hoping for home. Two verses later God says plainly that He will bring them back, and in the same breath He tells them to live now, fully, in the place that is not it.

Both at once. Plant the garden and know it is Babylon.

You are allowed to hope for one thing and live completely in another, and putting your grandfather on a wall has never once been a surrender. Jeremiah 29 holds the going home and the planting of gardens in the same short letter, and the Spirit of God is the one who saw no contradiction in it.