The Retirement Party at the Club

The club has a function room upstairs with a parquet floor and a hatch through to the bar, and the hatch does not close, and Kai has been thinking about the hatch for four days.

It is for Bernie. Thirty one years on the same crew. Bernie taught him how to sling a load when he was nineteen and stupid, and Bernie covered for him twice in the years when covering for him was a real thing somebody had to do, and Bernie has never once mentioned either of those facts in twelve years.

Friday, seven o'clock, upstairs at the club. A tab. Speeches. Bernie's daughter has made a photograph board. It will go until midnight and the last three hours are not really about Bernie anymore.

Kai is going. That was never in doubt. What he has been doing since Monday is the other thing: working out how a man stands in a room like that for five hours, next to an open hatch, being cheerful, without either drinking or making a thing of not drinking.

He has been to two of these before. Both times he stood near a wall and looked at his phone more than he wanted to, and both times he left at ten and felt like he had done something wrong.

It is Wednesday.

You know that room. It might be a retirement, a leaving do, a wake, a fundraiser. You are going because of a person, and the person deserves it, and the evening is long and free and has an open hatch in it, and you have four days to think about how to be in it.

You are walking into a room somebody has already gone into ahead of you, and you were never the first one through that door. Moses says the Lord, He it is that doth go before thee; He will be with thee, He will not fail thee, and going before is a different job from coming along; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a function room with a parquet floor.

He it is that doth go before thee

Let me name the weight, because the obvious name is the wrong one.

It is not the hatch. You have walked past open bars a hundred times. The weight is duration and posture: five hours of being a certain way in front of people you work with, with nothing in your hands and nothing to do, while the room slowly changes character around you. It is not one decision. It is three hundred minutes of small ones, and that is what has been in your chest since Monday.

So here is what Moses says to a people about to walk into a country they had already been frightened of once.

And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed.Deuteronomy 31:8

Three separate things about God in one line, and they are not the same thing.

Doth go before thee. He arrives first. Whatever the room is, He was in it before the caterer, before the photograph board, before Bernie's daughter pinned up the banner.

You are walking into a room God is already standing in, and you were never the one who had to arrive and make it safe. That is what is written in Deuteronomy 31, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes going before mean something concrete about an upstairs room at a social club.

He will be with thee. Not only ahead, but alongside, for the length of the thing. This is the part that matters for hour four, when the speeches are over and the room has changed and the reason you came has gone home. The company does not expire when the purpose does.

You have Him for the whole length of the evening, and you were never accompanied only for the part that had a point to it. Scripture puts going before and being with in the same sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps both operating at half past ten in a club function room.

He will not fail thee, neither forsake thee. Two words for the same fear, said twice on purpose. And the reason it is said twice is that this was spoken to Joshua in front of the entire nation, in public, at a handover, when the man everybody trusted was stepping down. Moses knew exactly what it feels like to be left holding a room.

You are not being left holding anything, and you were never going to be handed a long evening and abandoned in it. The written word doubles the promise for emphasis, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the doubling audible to a man who has four days of thinking behind him.

And the plain things this site says every time and means. You owe nobody in that room an explanation. If somebody asks, one short sentence and no reasons is a complete answer. You can leave at ten, and leaving at ten is not doing something wrong; it is a man who came to honor his friend, honored his friend, and went home. And if the friend who knows, the doctor, the counselor, or the room with the circle of chairs is what makes Friday possible, use it. That is God's kindness with a face on it.