My Flesh Shall Rest In Hope

Midnight, and he is looking at it again.

It is finished. He finished it at nine. Between nine and midnight he has looked at it four times, and each time he has found nothing, and each time he has gone away and come back.

He knows exactly what he is doing and can describe it accurately, which is the frustrating part: understanding it has not stopped it once.

He is trying to close the last gap. There is a small remaining possibility that something in it is wrong, and it is genuinely small, and it cannot be reduced to zero by looking, because the only way to eliminate it entirely is to see what happens when it goes out.

And he cannot lie down while that possibility is open.

That is the condition. Not: I cannot lie down while I am worried. He is not particularly worried. It is more structural than a feeling: an open possibility functions in him as a thing that must be closed before rest is permitted, and possibilities of that kind cannot be closed.

He is thirty nine and he has been doing this since university.

You may know that lamp. Something finished and a residual possibility, and an inability to lie down while any door remains even slightly open.

Where he put his body

Here is a verse about resting, and the thing worth noticing is the word attached to it.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.Psalm 16:9

My flesh also shall rest in hope.

Flesh. He is talking about the body, which is where your problem actually lives, because this is not a thought you are having, it is a body that will not lie down.

And where does the body rest? In hope.

Not in certainty. Hope in Scripture is not wishfulness, it is confident expectation about something not yet visible, which means it is by definition a place where the outcome has not been demonstrated. He does not say my flesh shall rest once everything is confirmed. He puts the resting in the very place where things are not yet settled.

You are able to lie down inside an open possibility, because hope is the place resting was always located. Psalm 16:9 puts the flesh at rest in hope rather than in certainty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to a man at midnight who has looked four times.

Now let me name the structure, because you described it well and it deserves a straight answer.

You have made certainty the entry condition for rest. That is a coherent rule and it works fine in a life where things can be verified. It fails completely in a life where the last few per cent is only ever settled by what happens next, which is every life and every trade.

So the rule cannot be satisfied. Not because you are anxious, but because you have made rest conditional on a thing that does not exist.

You are permitted to rest before the outcome is known, and that permission is the whole point of the word hope. The written word puts the body's rest in hope, and the Holy Spirit is not the one requiring the last gap to be closed before you are allowed to sleep.

The honest half. It will feel wrong to lie down with the door open, and it will feel wrong the next time as well. I am not going to promise you a night where it feels fine.

And I am not going to tell you your carefulness is a fault. It is not, and the first four hours of it produce your quality, and I have no interest in taking that from you.

There is a part only you can do and it happens at midnight rather than in theory. You lie down with the possibility still open. Deliberately. Having said one sentence first.