I Walked Out and Left Them Holding It

He did not resign. That is the part people do not usually understand when he tells it, and he mostly does not tell it.

He just did not come in on the Monday. Or the Tuesday. And by the Thursday there had been eleven calls, and by the following week there were none, and there was a project with a date on it that four people had to finish without him, and one of them was Priya who had a new baby and had already done more than her share.

Dan was thirty one. He is thirty nine now.

He knows what it cost them because he knows exactly what was left. He could draw the schedule. He knows the two weekends. He knows that Priya would have been the one to pick up the part he had, because she always was.

He has never contacted any of them. Not once in eight years. He has thought about it about a thousand times and every single time it has stopped at the same place, which is that there is no message that is not, in the end, about making himself feel better.

He works somewhere else now. He is good and he is reliable, aggressively reliable, and he has never taken a sick day in six years, and his current manager has told him twice that he does not need to be like that about it.

And on a Sunday night, most Sunday nights, for about ten minutes, he is thirty one again and there is a phone ringing.

You know that Monday. It might be a job, a team, a rota, a promise to be somewhere. You did not explain, and there was no scene, and you simply were not there, and other people picked it up.

You are living under terms where the record has been declared closed, and you were never on a rolling review. Hebrews says I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more, and it is quoted there as the language of a covenant; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that binding for a man on a Sunday night at thirty nine.

Their sins will I remember no more

Let me name it accurately, because there are two different things here and only one of them is what this article can touch.

The first is what it cost Priya and the others. That is real, and it is not undone by anything I write, and whether you ever contact any of them is a decision for you and for people who know the whole of it, and I am not going to tell you either way from a page. I will say only this: if you do it, do it because it would serve them, and if it would not serve them, that is a real answer and not a cowardly one.

The second is the terms you are living under, and that is where I can be useful, because you have been living under the wrong ones for eight years.

For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.Hebrews 8:12

That line is a quotation. The writer is citing Jeremiah, and he is citing it as the closing clause of a covenant, and that word matters more than any other word in this article.

A covenant is not a mood and it is not a policy that gets reviewed. It is a binding arrangement, entered into deliberately, with terms stated in advance. The reason this sentence is quoted at the end of the covenant description is that it is one of the terms. Not a bonus. A clause.

You are living inside a covenant with that clause written into it, and you were never on an arrangement that got renegotiated when somebody was let down. That is what stands written in Hebrews 8, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that binding on a Sunday night in a house at thirty nine.

And will I remember no more is the covenant language for will not raise, will not bring against, will not hold as a matter between us. God knows what happened on that Monday. He is not mistaken about it. What He has declared is that it is not a live item between Him and you, and He declared it as a term rather than as a kindness He might revisit.

You have that declared as a term rather than granted as a favor, and you were never depending on it being renewed. Scripture puts the phrase inside a covenant citation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man from treating a clause as a mood.

And now the thing I most want you to hear, because it is about the six years of never taking a sick day. Aggressive reliability is a good instinct pointed at the wrong target. If it is the work of a man who has been given a clean covenant, it is beautiful. If it is a payment plan on a Monday in 2018, it will never finish, because the debt it is servicing was canceled by somebody else and the payments are going nowhere.

You are working out of a settlement rather than toward one, and you were never running an account that is still open. The written word closes the account with a clause, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reorients a man's reliability from a payment into an offering.

And the plain thing, said as always. Eight years of a ten minute Sunday night is worth telling somebody about. A counselor, a friend, the room where people say true things out loud. That is God's kindness with a face on it, and it is a better place than a Sunday night to decide anything about Priya.