Four ladders, twelve people, about two dozen trees, and a good year, which everybody has said at least twice already and will say again.
Picking day. Somebody's van at the gate. Crates borrowed from the fruit farm on the understanding that they come back, and a tarpaulin for the windfalls, which go to the juicing and which the wasps have a strong opinion about.
There is a man who will not use a ladder and who has a pole with a basket on the end of it that he made himself and is enormously proud of. There is a child who has been given the important job of counting the crates and is now on twenty-three, which is more crates than there are.
It is one of the best mornings of the year, and everybody there knows it while it is happening, which is rare.
And she is scanning.
That is the honest word for it. All morning, under the pleasure, there is a part of her out on the edge of the field watching for the thing that will spoil it. Not a specific thing. She could not tell you what she is watching for. It is a general readiness, and it has been running in every good hour she has had for a long time, and it comes out of something nobody in that orchard knows about her.
She has never once been fully inside a morning like this. She has been at all of them. She has been inside none of them.
Sit on the tailgate with me. Today I am speaking to the one carrying something nobody knows, who took it to God straight and meant every word, and has been scanning ever since.
And I will say the honest thing first: I am not going to promise you the scanning stops today. What I will do is show you where a psalm puts a person's attention, and what it says holds them steady.
Set before me, which is a placing
There is a line in Psalm 16 with two clauses in it, and the second one is doing the work, and almost everybody credits the first.
I have set the LORD always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.Psalm 16:8
I have set. That is a placing verb. It is deliberate. Something has been positioned in the field of view on purpose, the way you would put a thing on a shelf where your eye will fall on it.
So the psalm does describe an act of attention, and it is the writer's act. That much is true, and I am not going to pretend it is not there.
But read the join. Because he is at my right hand.
The steadiness is not credited to the setting. It is credited to the position of the Lord, and the position of the Lord is a fact whether or not anybody has set anything. He is at the right hand, which in that world is the place of the one who stands beside you to support you and to answer for you in a dispute.
You are steadied by Someone standing at your right hand, and you were never being held up by the quality of your own attention. I am not being loose with the verse. The written word puts the reason clause on His position rather than on the setting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it into a woman on a tailgate in an orchard in October.
What the scanning has been costing
Now let me name the scanning, because it deserves to be named accurately and not scolded.
It is not fear exactly. It is not a lack of faith and I would not call it one. It is a stance a person takes up after something happens that they did not see coming, and it is entirely rational, and its whole purpose is to make sure that never happens again.
And it has one cost, and the cost is precisely the thing you would most want.
A person who is scanning is not inside the hour. They cannot be. Attention that is out on the edge of the field cannot also be up a ladder in an apple tree, and so the good mornings go past at a slight distance, all of them, for years.
The psalm offers something in place of that, and it is not a stronger watch. It is a different thing to have in the field of view, and it is a Person, and He is not out at the edge. He is at the right hand, which is close enough to touch.
You have Someone at your right hand and not out on the perimeter, and you were never as unaccompanied as the scanning assumed. Scripture puts Him at the nearest position there is, and it is His Spirit, not a relaxation you achieve, who makes a near thing feel near.
So here is the thing, and it is one ordinary act.
Choose one ordinary thing today, in advance, and do it in full view with your head up.
Go up a ladder. Not the pole with the basket on the end. Up, into a tree, where you can see the whole orchard and everybody can see you, and pick from up there for twenty minutes.
Choose it now, on the tailgate, so it is not a matter of nerve when the ladders go out.
And hear this, because it is the guardrail on the entire message. I am not grading your morning. If you are scanning the whole time you are up that ladder, that is not a failure and nothing is being marked. And a week when it is worse than today undoes nothing whatsoever.
And one plain thing first, because a page is not always the help a person needs. If what runs under this has gone past a heavy stretch into hours when being here at all feels like too much, tell one living person today. Your doctor, or a crisis line: 988 in the United States, 116 123 in the United Kingdom, or the emergency number where you live. You never have to tell anybody the thing itself in order to ask for help staying.
You are stood beside by God at the nearest position there is, and He was there on every good morning you spent watching the edge of the field. That is what the written word settles in Psalm 16, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying it off a page and into an orchard on a picking day.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that is the ground under every word coming next. This is not a feeling being worked up. It is agreement out loud with where the Lord is standing, and how this morning goes, and how the winter goes, the outcome is His. The written word is what settled it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it.
- Orchard on a picking day, you are four ladders and twelve people and a good year for apples. You are one of the best mornings of the year and everybody here knows it. The written word says the Lord is at my right hand, and I am going up a ladder and staying up it.
- Watch I keep on the edge of the field, you were set up so nothing could arrive unseen again, and I stand you down in the name of Jesus. You have cost me every good morning I have had. Attention out on a perimeter cannot also be up a tree.
- Lord, You are at my right hand, which is the nearest place there is and not the edge of anything. I am inside this morning today instead of beside it. And You have stood there through every hour I spent looking somewhere else.
Psalm 16:8
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