He has started sentences with in ten years about six times this month and he is twenty seven.
It is not doom exactly. He is not frightened of the future in the way that would show up on his face. What he does is more specific and more exhausting: he tries to run it forward.
He takes the thing he is making and he plays it out. What happens if this works. What happens if it works very well. Who ends up holding it. What could be done with it by somebody who thinks differently from him and has different reasons, and then what happens after that, and then the branch where it goes the other way.
He can do about four moves ahead before the tree gets too wide, and then he starts again with a different first branch.
And then he goes to work and does the thing, because it is Tuesday.
He would tell you he is being responsible. And there is something real in that, because thinking about consequences is not a vice. But what he is actually attempting, if you named it plainly, is to be accountable now for a world that does not exist yet and whose shape depends on thousands of decisions by people who have not made them.
He is twenty seven and he is tired in a way that has nothing to do with hours.
You may know that tree. Not fear of the future. An attempt to be responsible for it in advance, and a growing sense that you are failing at something nobody could do.
The line God drew Himself
Here is a verse that draws a line through the middle of everything, and I think it is one of the kindest sentences in the Old Testament.
The secret things belong unto the LORD our God: but those things which are revealed belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.Deuteronomy 29:29
Two categories, and God assigns them.
The secret things, which is everything hidden, everything not yet, everything that depends on what people have not decided, belong to Him. And the revealed things, which is what you actually have in front of you, belong to us. And notice the purpose clause at the end: that we may do. The revealed things are given to us so that we can act on them.
That is the whole architecture of a working conscience in one sentence.
You are given the revealed things, and they are given to you precisely so that you can act. Deuteronomy 29:29 hands the hidden to God and the revealed to us, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man on his own side of that line instead of exhausting him on the other.
Now let me name what the running forward has actually been doing to you.
You cannot see ten years. Nobody can. So the tree you build is not a picture of the future, it is a picture of your own imagination, and you have been holding yourself accountable to it. That is why it never resolves: you are grading yourself against a thing you invented, which means the grade can be adjusted downward indefinitely.
Meanwhile the actual, revealed, do-able thing sits in front of you on a Tuesday.
You are responsible for what you can see, and what you can see is a real and sufficient assignment. The written word gives the hidden to the Lord in plain terms, and the Holy Spirit does not ask a man for an account of a world that does not exist.
The honest half: some futures genuinely are foreseeable and you should think about the ones that are. That is part of the revealed. If you can actually see a consequence, it is not a secret thing, it is a revealed one, and it belongs to you and you should act on it. The line is not between careless and careful. It is between what is visible and what is not.
And I am not telling you what to do about any specific piece of work, because I cannot see your situation and it would be an outrageous thing to attempt from here.
There is a part only you can do. The two categories have to be said out loud in your own words, in order, so that the line stops being an idea and starts being a place you are standing.
You have been standing on the wrong side of a line God drew Himself.
Not out of arrogance. Out of care, which is why it has been so hard to put down and why nobody has been able to talk you out of it. But the effect of care aimed at the invisible is not safety. It is a tired man of twenty seven with a tree in his head.
You are holding the revealed things, and they were given to you so that you could actually do something today. Scripture assigns the secret things to God in one clause and the revealed to us in the next, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a conscience working instead of letting it run out into the dark.
So the ten years stay where they are, with the One who can see them. And the thing on the bench comes back into focus.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud on the hill or wherever you are. The standing to speak them is yours in Christ, given to you rather than achieved, which is why a man of twenty seven who has been carrying ten years in his head can speak with full footing this afternoon. Scripture is the ground under every line, the Holy Spirit makes it live, and everything hidden is His to decide.
- Tree of futures I build four moves deep, you are my imagination and not the world. Scripture says the secret things belong unto the LORD, so I have been holding myself accountable to a thing I made up and grading myself against it.
- Attempt to answer for ten years from now, in the name of Jesus you end. The written word gives the revealed things to us so that we may do them, and the Holy Spirit has never once asked me for an account of a world that does not exist.
- Lord, the hidden things are Yours and I am giving them back to You where they already were. I thank You that You drew the line Yourself in Deuteronomy 29:29 and put the doing on my side of it, and I am naming both sides now and going to do today's work.
Deuteronomy 29:29
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