The oche is a strip of wood screwed to the floor seven foot nine and a quarter inches from the face of the board, and every darts player alive knows that measurement without ever having looked it up.
Thursdays. A social club with a low ceiling and a carpet that has seen things. Two boards, both under proper lighting, which the committee argued about for two years and got right in the end. A chalkboard, because in that league it is chalk and it will be chalk after everybody currently alive is dead.
Nine years he played in that team.
He was the number four. Steady, not spectacular, and he had a particular use in a match which is that he did not get rattled, and every captain in that league knew it, and it is worth more over a season than anybody thinks.
He has been past the door three times since he stopped.
Not walked past. Been about to go in. Hand on the door once, actually on it, on a Thursday in March, and then his body turned and went back down the steps to the pavement and he was fifteen yards up the road before he had thought a single sentence about any of it.
That is the thing he cannot explain to himself. It is not a decision. The decision comes afterward, and it arrives to justify a thing his feet have already done.
Sit down here with me. Today I am speaking to you, the one whose weight belongs to what another person did, a long way back. I am not going to ask you what it was, and nothing here wants the thing itself.
And before you brace for it: nobody here is setting you a pace, and stopping going is not a sin, and this site will never once call it one.
Read the proverb as two halves, carefully
There is a line in Proverbs that has been read badly at people for centuries and I want to take some trouble over it.
The wicked flee when no man pursueth: but the righteous are bold as a lion.Proverbs 28:1
Two halves, set against each other the way proverbs are.
Now the first half. It is not an accusation aimed at everybody who has ever left a room. It is an observation about a reflex, and the point of it is that the fleeing is happening when there is no pursuer, which means the proverb is describing something going on inside a man rather than something happening around him.
I am not going to put that first half on you. Your weight belongs to what somebody else did, and a proverb about the reflex of a guilty conscience is not a description of a person who was sinned against, and applying it to you would be a piece of careless preaching that has done a great deal of damage in exactly your direction.
You are not the man in the first half of that verse, and you were never the one it was written about. I am not being kind to you at the cost of accuracy. The written word contrasts two states and yours is not the one the fleeing belongs to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it to a man standing on a pavement fifteen yards up the road.
The second half is a description
Now the half that is yours, and read the grammar of it.
The righteous are bold as a lion.
It is not an imperative. It does not say be bold. It is a statement about what the righteous are, in the same way the first half is a statement about what the other reflex does. It is describing, not commanding.
And you are among the righteous, not because of anything you managed, but because that is what God calls a person who is in Christ, and it is a legal standing rather than a report on your Thursday.
Which means the boldness in that line is not an assignment you are behind on. It is a description of a state you are already in, and the fact that your feet went down those steps in March does not amend the description any more than a bad night amends a passport.
You are described as bold in the written word, and you were given that description rather than asked to earn it. Scripture makes the second half a statement of what the righteous are, and it is His Spirit, not a better Thursday in March, who makes a description begin to be felt.
So here is the ask, and it is deliberately small.
Go into one ordinary place you have been avoiding. Today, briefly. Ten minutes. Through the door and stand at the back and watch a leg of darts and go.
And say nothing at all about why you stopped. If somebody says look who it is, say something ordinary back, and owe that room nothing further for the rest of your life.
There is no second stage. Nobody is going to put you down as the number four again next season. If ten minutes at the back is what tonight holds, that is the whole assignment, and if tonight holds nothing, that is my work to keep at and never a failure in you.
And one plain thing first, because a page is not always the help a man needs. If what was done to you is still happening, or if tonight feels frightening, reach for a person rather than a page. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour and a real person answers. In the United Kingdom, 116 123. Anywhere else, the emergency number where you live or a national line. You never have to describe anything to anybody in order to ask for help staying.
You are called bold by God's own description of you, and you were called it on the Thursday in March with your hand on the door. That is what the written word settles in Proverbs 28, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying it off a page and into a room with a low ceiling and two boards properly lit.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that is the ground under every word coming next. This is not a mood being worked up. It is agreement out loud with a description God gave, and how tonight goes, and how the season goes, the outcome is His. The written word is what settled it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it.
- Chalkboard by the oche, you are slate and a stub of chalk and a Thursday. You have kept a great many scores and you have never once kept mine. The written word calls the righteous bold as a lion, and I am through that door for one leg tonight.
- Reflex that moves before I decide, you are a body doing something and you are not a verdict, and I refuse your reading in the name of Jesus. It was not mine and it never wrote my name. The first half of that proverb was never written about me.
- Lord, You call the righteous bold and You said it as a description and not an order. I am standing at the back of that room tonight with nothing to explain. And You called me it on the Thursday in March with my hand still on the door.
Proverbs 28:1
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