Nothing

At my dad’s house, we have this metal tin bowl receptacle thing where we keep all those things that don’t seem to go anywhere else. Do you have one of these places in your house? It’s maybe a shelf or a drawer, it’s that place where you put all, all those possessions that have no home, and it’s just where it ends up at. And so, at any one time, you know, its got like a shoelace and its got a key to you have no idea what and you know, maybe some rubber cement and a stick of dynamite or something.. I mean I don’t know.

So anyways, a few days ago, my family and I were cleaning the kitchen, we’re picking things up and I noticed this little square card that went missing from my bag, in the metal bowl. And I’m struck with the fact that I’ve no idea on how it got there from my bag. So I turn to my dad and ask him ‘where did this card come from, where’d you get it?’ he says ‘I have no idea, I’ve never seen it before.’  His wife says the same. And my step sister and little brother are over here so I was like ‘hey guys, where’d this uh, little card come from?’ and my step sister says, ‘well, I don’t know, I’ve never seen it.’ And my little brother says. ‘It’s just the strangest thing, I don’t know. I don’t know where it came from. Do you know where it came from?’ and then he like keeps going in the same voice. He’s like ‘it’s just the strangest thing, this little black card, it appeared out of nowhere, who knows where it came from!’ and my dad and I look at each other and we have this look between us like ‘do you know who this boy is?’ I mean for a few brief moments he’s some other kid and he just keeps going with these bizarre gestures. It’s like he’s been possessed by the spirit of Urkel or something.  And for a few brief moments, he’s this other boy, you know, ‘I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know where it came from?’ But I mean it was just a little square card that wasn’t really important to me and I tell myself, this is not that much of a big deal.

So a couple days later my dad is at home with my little brother and his friend and he’s in one room and they’re playing in another room and, and uh, he hears this ruckus and the two of them run into the room where he’s at and my little brother’s friend is crying and he’s consisting that that my little brother hit him and my brother is going ‘I didn’t hit him, I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s the strangest thing, it’s the weirdest thing, I didn’t hit him.’  And he’s going on and on and his friend with tears streaming down his face is going ‘no, he hit me!’ and my little brother is going ‘No I don’t know what you’re talking about, it’s the strangest thing. It’s the weirdest thing” and then my dad just says to him, ‘Kind of like you don’t know where the little card came from?’  And he just freezes. Like the technical legal word here is “busted”. You know that moment, like when you’re junk catches up to you? It’s not maybe that day, maybe not the next day, maybe not for a while, but given enough time it always finds us. Like there’s this great phrase, “wherever you go, there you are”. It’s written in the bible, in the book of Galatians, like don’t be misled. No one makes a fool out of God. Whatever we plan will end up harvesting. It’s like one way or another, given enough time, our sins find us out. It always catches up to us. Doesn’t it? So my little brother stands there in front of my dad, frozen. And then he turns and runs upstairs.

Because sometimes it’s easier to run upstairs isn’t it, than to face the truth. Now this whole time I hadn’t even been there. I’m coming home and I call my dad and he tells me this whole story and so I’m driving along thinking ‘what am I supposed to do when I get home?’ I mean I know I should do something but I had no idea of what to do. And so I get home and my dad tells me that he hasn’t heard a sound from him upstairs the whole time. So I go upstairs and I go check in his room and he’s not there. So I go check in my step sister’s room and my dad’s room and he’s not there.  And then I check the bathroom and he’s not there. This leaves only one option, my room. And so I go and I stand in the doorway of my bedroom and I look in and there, in the middle of my bed under the covers is a lump, the size and shape of my brother. And I mean at this point, he’s been under there for like 2 hours. It must be so hot, he must be so miserable, I mean, can he even breathe under there? I feel as if I should give him a snorkel. I mean, he must just be miserable. And I start thinking about all the amends he’s gonna need to make, to my dad and to his friend and to me, cause he knew he took the little card from my bag and he’s going to need to apologize. And I stand in the doorway of my room and I think about my brother and all of his shame.  The kind of shame that he would hide under the cover for that long. And so I go over and I sit down on the edge of the bed and I pull the covers back a little bit and the first thing I see is just this soaking wet hair, you know like he’s been under water.  And so I pull the cover slowly back until he’s just laying there all curled up with his eyes closed and he doesn’t move. It’s like he has this choice. Does he continue, does he grab the covers and pull them back over his head and keep hiding or does he just let himself lay there totally exposed and vulnerable? So I sit on the edge of the bed and I say to him, ‘there’s nothing you could ever do to make me love you less.’ And then slowly he sits up and he opens his eyes and he plants his soaking wet head right on the middle of my formerly dry shirt. And he wraps his little wet warm arms around me and he just starts sobbing. He cries and cries and cries and he’s so sorry. And so I sit on the edge of the bed, holding my little brother with the covers pulled back repeating, ‘nothing you could ever do to make me love you less, there is nothing you could ever do. Do you realize that, do you now that? Nothing you could ever do that could make me love you less.'


I mean whatever you’ve done, wherever you’ve been, whatever you will do, God loves you  and God always has and you can’t change that. Cause sometimes the little card may seem like everything doesn’t it? It’s like how am I ever gonna get away from it? And so we have no idea what to do with our shame, so we run upstairs and we hide under the covers and we keep hiding because we don’t know where to go or what to do. And maybe you’re like ‘yea, but you don’t understand what I’ve done ‘ or like ‘if only you knew …’ no, like it says in the book of Romans, chapter 8 in the bible, “there’s nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Jesus. ‘ nothing, nothing! Nothing can separate you. So may you stop hiding under the covers. May you let God pull the covers back. May you embrace Him. I mean, may your whole life become a response to the truth that you’ve always been loved, you are loved, and you always will be loved.  And may you know, may you know deep in the depths of your soul that there is nothing you could ever do to make Him love you less. Nothing you could ever do to make God love you les. Nothing you could ever do to make Him love you less. Nothing.....

Nothing.