The church picnic is once a year in the field behind the hall and it is the only afternoon in the calendar where I sit down outdoors with a full plate and nothing to do.
I had the plate. I want to describe the plate because the plate is the whole of my case. There was ham on it and there was Mrs. Ames's potato thing that she only makes for this, and there was a piece of pie already on the same plate, which I do because life is short. And I had a place on the wall in the sun, and I had actually sat down on it.
Bucky went out of the field at the top corner about eleven seconds after I sat down. Toby saw him go and did not say anything because Toby was doing something with the other children, and Deacon Wattles saw him go and said a great deal, none of it useful, and inflated slightly.
So I put the plate on the wall and I went.
He was in the graveyard again, which is his favorite, and then he was not, and then he was in the lane, and it took me a little under two hours all told and I got back at the point where everybody was folding tables.
The plate was still on the wall. Somebody had put a cloth over it, and I know who, and she has never mentioned it and I have never mentioned it, and that is how that works round here.
Here is the part I keep. Toby came and found me at the bottom of the lane about halfway through, with his shoes wrong for it, and he walked the rest with me, and when we got back and I was standing there looking at my covered plate he said that he was sorry about the picnic.
And I said that I have had thirty of these picnics and I will have some more, and that I would not have been able to sit on that wall for two hours knowing there was an animal of mine on a road.
He thought about that the whole way home in the truck. I could hear him thinking about it.
He takes the job back
Ezekiel 34 is a long complaint about shepherds who did not do the work, and then in the middle of it the tone changes completely and God stops describing them and starts describing Himself.
For thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. (Ezekiel 34:11)
I, even I. The doubling is in the Hebrew and the translators kept it because it is doing something. He is not delegating this. He is not appointing a committee. He is naming Himself twice as the one who goes.
And then the verse after it puts the searching in weather: as a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered; so will I seek out my sheep.
You are being searched for by somebody who took the job off everybody else and named Himself twice doing it. Ezekiel 34:11 makes the search personal in the grammar rather than only in the sentiment, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as being wanted instead of as being processed.
There is a particular assumption that sits under a lot of quiet people, and it is not exactly low self worth. It is a sense of not being worth the interruption. Worth helping, yes, if somebody happens to be passing. Not worth somebody putting a plate down.
You have not been costed out against somebody's afternoon. The written word has God interrupting Himself into the middle of a complaint to say He is going personally, and His Spirit is what makes that arrive in the exact assumption a person has been carrying.
What He says He is looking for
The rest of that passage is a list, and the list is worth reading slowly because of who is on it.
I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick. (Ezekiel 34:16)
Four categories. Lost, driven away, broken, sick. Not one of those is a description of an animal that did anything clever.
Driven away is the interesting one, because it is passive. Somebody drove it. That one did not wander off on its own initiative, and God puts it in the same sentence and gives it the same answer.
You are on that list whichever way you got where you are. Ezekiel 34:16 covers the one who ran and the one who was pushed with the same verb, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a fact rather than a hope.
And the psalm everybody knows starts from the same place and gets to the same conclusion in fewer words: The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.
You have been claimed by somebody who describes the searching as His own work rather than as a favor. That is what Ezekiel 34 says in the first person throughout, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves first person off a page and into a field behind a hall.
So here is what I said standing in a field looking at a covered plate.
You are worth an interrupted afternoon, and Ezekiel 34:11 has God putting His own name to the search twice in one clause. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a fine sentiment and makes it the actual reason a man gets up off a wall.
I do want to be truthful and say that I was not noble about it. I was annoyed. I had thought about that potato thing on and off since about Thursday. And I went, because there was an animal of mine out on a road, and being annoyed and going are two facts that live together perfectly well.
You have not been weighed against somebody's good day and found too expensive. Ezekiel 34:16 puts the lost and the driven away in the same sentence with the same promise, and His Spirit is what makes that cover the way you actually got here.
And this is for the one doing the reading, who has spent years being the person who does not want to be any trouble. You were never the trouble in this arrangement. Ezekiel says I, even I will search, in the first person, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a first person sentence land on a particular name.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over the idea that you are not worth the trouble is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God said He would search His sheep Himself and named Himself twice, so speak to that idea: you have standing to address it because He is the one who took the job. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Ezekiel 34:11 and Ezekiel 34:16 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Idea that I am not worth the trip, you are not the truth. The Word of God says behold, I, even I, will both search my sheep and seek them out, and He says His own name twice in that clause.
- Habit of not wanting to be trouble, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am sought and I am brought back, because Ezekiel 34:16 lists the one who was driven away right alongside the one who wandered.
- Father, You have never once counted the cost of coming after me. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word puts the searching in the first person and leaves nobody else holding it.
Ezekiel 34:11
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