Four hundred yards, and a hill at the end that is not much of a hill and that everybody in that road refers to as the hill.
Sunday, about half eight. The paper shop opens at seven and by half eight the good ones are gone and everybody knows it and everybody goes at half eight anyway.
And on that four hundred yards there are three people.
The man at number twelve who washes his car on a Sunday regardless of weather and who will say something about the weather. The woman with the two dogs, one of whom is friendly and one of whom is a matter of ongoing negotiation. And a lad of about nineteen who is always coming home at that hour from wherever nineteen year olds come home from, and who says all right in a way that manages to be entirely respectful.
Three greetings in four hundred yards. Eight or nine words in total.
And he starts getting ready for them at his own front door.
That is the thing. Not dreading them. He likes all three of those people and he would say so. It is that something in him arranges itself before he steps out, and stays arranged for the whole walk, and comes back down about the time he is putting the kettle on.
Nine years of that. He has come to think of it as being a man who is on top of things.
Sit down on the low wall by the postbox with me. Today I am speaking to the one who did something a long way back, took it to God straight and meant every syllable, and has spent nine years bracing and calling it steadiness.
And I will say the honest thing first: I am not promising you the arrangement stops before the corner. What I will do is put two words in front of you that are not the same word.
Fixed is not braced
Psalm 112 is an acrostic, which is to say a poem written down the alphabet, and acrostics in the Hebrew Bible are almost always about ordinary settled life rather than about crises. It is a portrait of a person going about their days.
And in the middle of that portrait there is this.
He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD.Psalm 112:7
His heart is fixed.
The Hebrew there is kun, and it is a building word. It is used of a house established on foundations, of a throne set up, of a thing made firm so that it will stay where it has been put. It is about stability by construction.
Now put that beside the other thing a heart can be, which is braced.
Braced is a muscle. It is effort, held. It costs something continuously, it cannot be sustained indefinitely, and the moment it stops the whole thing goes.
Fixed is a foundation. It costs nothing to maintain. It is not a state a man works up before he leaves his own front door.
You are given a heart that is fixed rather than a heart that is held, and you were never designed to keep it up yourself. I am not being generous with the vocabulary. The written word uses a building verb rather than an effort verb, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it to a man on a low wall by a postbox on a Sunday.
And read the voice of the verb
Now the piece a careful reader wants, because you are one.
Is fixed is not something the man does to himself in that sentence. It is a passive form. His heart has been established. Somebody did the establishing, and the verse names what it rests on in the same breath: trusting in the LORD.
So the sequence is not: work up a settled heart, then trust. It is: the heart is established, and what it is established on is Him.
Which means nine years of arranging yourself at a front door has been the wrong trade entirely. Not a failed attempt at the right thing. A different activity altogether, and an exhausting one, and it was never producing what the verse describes because the verse describes something built rather than something held.
You are established by God on a foundation He laid, and you were never the one holding the structure up on a Sunday morning. Scripture uses a passive of a building verb and names what it rests on, and it is His Spirit, not a better run at the hill, who makes a built thing feel built.
So here is the thing, and it is one ordinary act.
Choose one ordinary thing today, in advance, and do it in full view with your head up.
Walk to the paper shop. Say something to all three of them, and say a whole sentence to at least one, and go up the hill at the end at your own speed rather than the speed of a man getting somewhere.
Choose it now, on the wall, so it is not a matter of nerve at the front door.
And hear this, because it is the guardrail on this whole message and on everything else on this site. I am not grading your Sunday. If you arrange yourself at the door exactly as you have for nine years, that is not a failure and nothing is being marked. And a month when the whole of it is back undoes nothing at all.
And one plain thing first, because a page is not always the help a man needs. If what sits under this has gone past a heavy stretch into hours when being here at all feels like too much, tell one living person today. Your doctor, or a crisis line: 988 in the United States, 116 123 in the United Kingdom, or whatever the number is where you live. You never have to say the thing itself in order to ask for help staying.
You have a heart God has established on Himself, and it was established through every one of the nine years you spent holding one up. That is what the written word settles in Psalm 112, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying it off a page and onto four hundred yards of pavement on a Sunday morning.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that is the ground under your boots before a word of this is spoken. This is not a mood being worked up. It is agreement out loud with something God built, and how this Sunday goes, and how the winter goes, the outcome is His. The written word is what settled it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it.
- Walk to the paper shop, you are four hundred yards and a hill at the end of it. You are three people and about nine words and the good papers already gone. The written word says my heart is fixed, and I am walking you at my own speed this morning.
- Arranging I do at my own front door, you are a muscle held and you have never once been a foundation, and I let you go in the name of Jesus. Kun is a building word. Fixed costs nothing to keep, and braced costs everything.
- Lord, You established my heart and the verse says so in the passive, and the thing it rests on is You. I am saying a whole sentence to the woman with the dogs today. And it has been built and standing through every one of the nine years I spent holding it.
Psalm 112:7
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