It Was A House Move

It was a house move. That is the whole reason. They went to Spokane.

You found out on Thursday, from somebody else entirely, in a conversation about something completely different, and the man said it in passing as though it were a minor fact, which is exactly what it is.

And here is what you cannot explain, and it is the reason I am writing this. It did not help. You had spent nine days going through your own work looking for the flaw, and then the true reason arrived and it had nothing to do with you, and you are still carrying it.

You would have expected relief. What arrived instead was something flatter, and slightly embarrassing, which is that you had already built a whole account of your own failings and the account does not dismantle itself just because the evidence has gone.

I am not going to tell you to feel better now that you know. I am going to talk about a verse that names the real mechanism, and the naming of it is the part that helps.

Time and chance happeneth to them all

There is a sentence in Ecclesiastes that most people find unsettling, and I think it is one of the kindest in the Bible for a working man.

The writer has been looking at how things actually go, and he refuses to tidy it up.

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all. (Ecclesiastes 9:11, King James Version)

You are living in a world where things simply happen, and that has never once been a reflection on your work. Ecclesiastes 9:11 says outright that outcomes are not a straight readout of ability, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a roadside verge with a thermos between two men.

Read what it refuses to say. It does not say the race always goes to the swift and therefore if you lost you were slow. It says the opposite, and it says it in five different ways in one verse.

Time and chance. A moving truck outside the house on a Tuesday. A daughter's job in another city. A lease ending. None of that is a message and none of it is an assessment.

You have been reading a verdict into an event, and Scripture has never once read them that way. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an old honest sentence about outcomes reach a man standing at a gate, and Ecclesiastes 9:11 names time and chance as real without making them cruel.

Why the reason did not fix it

Let me say what happened in those nine days, because the nine days are the thing that is still with you.

You built a case. You went back through the last three jobs and found a place where you were a day late, and a place where the finish was not your best, and a conversation you could have handled better. You found those because you were looking, and a man who looks will always find three.

You were assembling a case against yourself, and there has never once been a court that asked for it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what nine days of searching actually produced, and the written word says plainly that time and chance happen to everybody in Ecclesiastes 9:11.

And now the reason has arrived and it does not touch the case. The case is about you and the reason is about Spokane, so they never meet, and you are left holding three faults that were never the cause of anything.

Those three things are probably worth a moment each, on an ordinary day, with no weight on them. They are not evidence and they never were.

You are not the explanation for everything that happens near you, and you never were. His Spirit is the one who unpicks a case a man built against himself, and Ecclesiastes 9:11 puts time and chance into the record without blaming anybody for them.

Say the reason out loud

So here is the exercise, and it sounds too small to matter.

Say the reason out loud. It was a house move. They went to Spokane. That is all it was.

You are able to say the true reason out loud, and saying it has never once been making excuses. Ecclesiastes 9:11 names time and chance as the ordinary shape of things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain fact stick for a man who has spent nine days building something else.

You have known it since Thursday and you have not once said it. Knowing a thing in your head and saying it in your own voice are different operations, and the second one is the one that moves it.

Then leave the three faults alone. Not forgiven, not dealt with, not addressed. Just put down, because they were never the cause.

You were never required to find a reason inside yourself, and you are not required to now. The Spirit of God carries a man past the habit of being the explanation, and the written word refuses to tie outcomes to ability in Ecclesiastes 9:11 and says so five times in one sentence.