Who Am I When Nobody Needs Me

There were two hours on Saturday where nobody needed anything.

Not a crisis. Not a bad thing. Everybody was out or occupied and there was nothing that had to be done, and for the first hour it was pleasant in the way a held breath is pleasant.

And then somewhere in the second one it turned, and you found yourself walking from room to room doing small unnecessary things, and by four o'clock you were oddly relieved when somebody came in and wanted something.

That relief is the part you have thought about since.

I am not going to tell you to find a hobby. That is a plan and this is not a place that hands those out, and being told to develop interests when you are describing something else entirely is its own small insult.

And I am not going to tell you who you are. A stranger doing that from the outside would be worth nothing.

Beset behind and before

There is a line in Psalm 139 that describes a position, and the word in it is unusually physical.

Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me. (Psalm 139:5, King James Version)

Beset. It is a siege word. It means surrounded on all sides, enclosed, hemmed in with no gap left anywhere.

And it is used here as a comfort, which is startling, because in almost every other context it is what happens to a city that is about to fall.

You are hemmed in on every side by God, and no gap has ever once opened in it including on a Saturday afternoon. Psalm 139:5 says thou hast beset me behind and before, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into an empty house at four o'clock.

And notice what it does not mention. Nothing in that verse describes the person doing anything.

They are not working, not needed, not useful, not asked for. They are simply the thing being surrounded, and the whole sentence describes activity happening to them rather than by them.

You are described in that verse while doing nothing at all, and no part of it has ever once required you to be useful. It is written in Psalm 139:5 that God has beset a person behind and before and laid a hand upon them, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a person still doing nothing on a Saturday.

Why the second hour turned

Now let me name what happened between three and four, because it is worth being precise about.

The first hour was rest, because rest is what an interval feels like when it is understood as a gap between tasks.

The second hour was not rest, because at some point it stopped being a gap and became a condition, and a condition needs an identity to sit in, and yours has been supplied by demand for a very long time.

That is not shallow and it is not a failure to have an inner life. Being defined by demand is what happens to anybody who has been genuinely necessary, every day, for years, and it happens to nurses and farmers and everybody who has ever been on call.

You are not hollow underneath, and being shaped by a decade of demand has never once meant there is nothing else in there. It is written in Psalm 139:5 that a person is beset behind and before, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies a position where a role has gone quiet.

Psalm 139:5 supplies a position rather than a role, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person in place when the demand goes quiet.

You are held in place by a position rather than by a role, and the quiet has never once been able to dissolve it. Psalm 139:5 describes somebody surrounded rather than employed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person still when nothing is being asked of them.

And here is the plain thing, because Saturday has become something about you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence of a person with no self outside their children.

It is a person whose identity has been supplied by demand for years finding out what happens when the supply pauses, which is information rather than a fault.

You have not disappeared into your own household, and two strange hours have never once been a report on the person having them. The written word describes a person surrounded and touched while doing nothing in Psalm 139:5, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to grade an empty afternoon.

And laid thine hand upon me

One more thing about the last clause, because it changes the temperature of the whole verse.

And laid thine hand upon me.

A hand laid on somebody is not the same as being surrounded. Surrounding could be impersonal. A hand is contact, deliberate, and made by a person who is close enough to reach.

That is what the verse ends on, and it is the answer to the specific hollowness of an afternoon where nobody touched, spoke to or asked anything of you.

Psalm 139:5 ends in contact rather than in enclosure, and the Holy Spirit is the one whose hand is on somebody wandering from room to room at half past three.

You are being touched rather than merely surrounded, and no empty afternoon has ever once been a room with nobody in it. Psalm 139:5 ends with a hand laid on a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in contact with somebody in an empty house.