Three Doors on the Way Home

The 47 puts him down on the corner of Delmar at about twenty to seven, and from there it is fifteen minutes on foot to his own front door, and in those fifteen minutes there are three doors.

The first one is ninety seconds from the bus stop and it has a green awning and a hand painted sign, and Rafa knows the man who owns it and the man who owns it is kind, and that is the difficult part. The second one is a corner place with a television always on. The third is not really a bar at all, it is a store, and it is the worst of the three because it takes eleven seconds and nobody would ever know.

He walks it five nights a week. It is not a heroic walk. It is a man in work boots going home.

But by the time he steps off the bus his shoulders are already up around his ears, because the fifteen minutes have stopped being a walk and turned into a corridor with three doors set into the side of it, and he has to get down the corridor without any of them opening.

He counts things. That is his method and he has never told anybody about it because it sounds ridiculous. Between the bus and the green awning he counts the parked cars. Between the awning and the corner place he counts the trees, of which there are four. Past the store he does not count anything, he just walks fast and looks at the crack in the sidewalk that has been there since he was a boy.

Tonight there is an old man on a stoop who says something about the weather and Rafa says something back, and that takes eleven seconds, which is exactly as long as the store would have taken, and he notices this on his own front step and does not know what to do with it.

Nothing happened tonight. Nothing has happened for a long time. It is only a walk home, five times a week, forever.

You know that route. It might not be a sidewalk. It might be the aisle you go down to get to the bread, or the drive that passes the place, or a hallway in your own house. Nothing dramatic. Just a shape in your ordinary day that you have to get through with your shoulders up, over and over, and no one to tell about it because there is nothing to tell.

You are being led on the fifteen minutes, and you were never sent down that street on your own. The psalm says He leads me beside the still waters, and leading is something a shepherd does on the way, in transit, on the path itself and not only at the destination; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a present fact on a sidewalk on Delmar at twenty to seven.

He makes me to lie down

Let me put the ache into words first, because nobody around you can see it and that is most of why it is heavy.

Everybody else on that street is just going home. For you the same fifteen minutes is work. Not agony, not crisis, just work, five nights a week, with your shoulders up and your eyes on a crack in the sidewalk. And there is nobody to tell, because what would you even say? That you walked home? That nothing happened? The undramatic is the loneliest kind of hard, because there is no vocabulary for reporting it.

Here is the psalm everybody knows, and I want you to look at a word in it that most people slide past.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.Psalm 23:2

He maketh me. That is a strong verb and it has always been a strong verb. Sheep do not lie down when they are anxious. A shepherd who wants a flock at rest does not lecture them about resting; he handles the things that keep them on their feet, and then they lie down, because the reason to stay standing has been dealt with. The rest in that verse is manufactured by the shepherd, not achieved by the sheep.

You are made to lie down by somebody else's competence, and you were never the one responsible for producing your own rest. That is what is written in Psalm 23, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a verb about pasture management and applies it to a man walking home past three doors with his shoulders up.

Now the second half. He leadeth me beside the still waters. Leading happens on the route. It is not a description of arrival, it is a description of transit. The shepherd is not waiting at the water with His arms folded, watching to see whether the sheep can find it. He is on the path, in front, at walking pace, choosing which way the flock goes past the things that would spook it.

You have a Shepherd on the sidewalk with you, and you have Him at walking pace and not waiting at the far end. Scripture says He leadeth me, present tense, on the way, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes leading mean something on Delmar between the bus stop and a green awning.

And here is the thing about that psalm that changes the walk. It is written in the first person by a man who had been a shepherd himself. David is not guessing at the metaphor. He knew that a sheep alone is in real trouble and a sheep with a shepherd is doing exactly the same walk with an entirely different set of odds. Same road. Same three doors. Different flock arrangement.

You are walking the same street tonight and you are not walking it in the same company, and you were transferred out of alone at the cross and not on the strength of a good week. The written word calls Him the Shepherd and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man from confusing a hard route with an abandoned one.

And the plain thing, said here as it is said everywhere on this site: the friend you could walk with, the doctor, the counselor, the group that meets on a Thursday, all of that is God's kindness with a face and a name. Reaching for it is not a weaker faith, it is one of the oldest ways a shepherd has ever moved a flock: with other hands, at walking pace, on the road.