The Life Waiting on the Other Side

There is an entire life stacked up on the other side and you have not opened one box of it.

The clothes, obviously. But it is much more than clothes. There is a way you would be at a party. There are photographs you would be in. There are conversations you would start. There is a chair you would sit in at your own table instead of the one nearest the kitchen.

None of it is vague. That is the remarkable thing about this and the reason it costs so much. It is an inventoried, detailed, complete life, and every item in it is in storage.

And storage costs. Not money. It costs the present, which pays rent on it every single day.

Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. You have worked at the change for years and you have gotten up every time. Somebody who did not care would have unpacked the boxes and not waited for anything.

So this page will not tell you the change is not coming. It might.

I want to show you a verse about where a man expected to see something good, and notice where he looked for it.

Storage has a rent

Consider what keeping a whole life in boxes actually costs, because nobody itemizes it.

Every item over there is an item not in use here. The chair you would sit in is a chair you are not sitting in. The conversation you would start is a conversation nobody is having. And the accumulation of all those absences is not a smaller life waiting for a bigger one. It is the only life you have, rented out to a life that does not exist.

You have been paying rent on a life that does not exist, and no storage has ever once been free. Psalm 27:13 says I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a verse about where to look arrive on somebody looking in the wrong room.

And notice why the boxes have never been opened. Not because of the items. Because opening one would be a statement: that this life, as currently constituted, is the one the items belong in. And that is the concession you have refused to make for years.

You have refused a concession rather than the items, and no unpacked box has ever once been a statement about anything. The written word locates the goodness in the land of the living, which is a place rather than a condition, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a location out of a promise.

In the land of the living

David says it as a man who nearly went under.

I had fainted, unless I had believed to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living. (Psalm 27:13, King James Version)

I had fainted unless. He says the only thing that kept him upright was an expectation, and then he gives the address of the expectation.

In the land of the living. Not afterward. Not in a better version of his circumstances. Here, among people who are alive, in the ordinary world, which is exactly where he was when he wrote it.

You have an address for the goodness and it has never once been somewhere other than here. Psalm 27 puts the seeing in the land of the living rather than beyond it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a location specific enough to unpack a box in.

And read what the expectation did for him. It kept him standing. Not the arrival of the goodness, which the verse does not report. The expectation of seeing it here is what held him up.

You are held up by expecting it here, and no expectation aimed somewhere else has ever once held anybody up. The Spirit of God is the one who moves an expectation from a future address to a present one, and the written word says to see the goodness of the LORD in the land of the living.

Unpack one box

Now the part I came to say, and one is the whole instruction.

Unpack one box. Take one item out of that life and put it into use today.

Wear the thing. Sit in the chair at your own table. Start the conversation. Be in the photograph. Whatever the smallest item is, and there will be a smallest one, because you have an inventory.

You have one item that can come out of storage today, and no single item has ever once required a concession about everything. The written word puts the goodness in the land of the living, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one item usable in an ordinary week.

And here is why one item does more than a decision would. A decision about the whole arrangement is a large thing and you would not keep it. One item in use is a fact, sitting in your actual house, on an ordinary day, and it is very hard for a theory about a future life to ignore an item that is currently being used.

You have a fact in the room now, and no theory about a future life has ever once been able to ignore one. The Spirit of God is the one who makes one unpacked thing louder than an argument, and Psalm 27:13 is the written word underneath it, where the goodness is expected in the land of the living and the expecting is what kept a man on his feet.