The Suitcase He Never Unpacked

The hallway in that apartment is narrow enough that two people have to turn sideways, and at the end of it, before the kitchen, there is a wardrobe that was in the flat when they came and will be in it when they go, because there is no way it is getting down those stairs.

On top of the wardrobe there is a suitcase.

It is a hard sided one, cream, with a strap round it, and a tag from an airline that stopped existing in 2019. It has been up there for eleven years.

Karam came with two. That is what you get, when it is that kind of leaving: two, and whatever you can wear.

The first one was open on the floor within an hour of arriving, and it emptied over about a week, and it went to a charity shop in the spring.

The second one went up on the wardrobe.

He is fifty. He can reach it. He is not a short man and there is a chair. It is not up there because of physics. It is up there because of a decision that has never once been made out loud, and which is renewed, silently, every single time he walks past it, which is roughly nine times a day, eleven years.

Rasha is sixteen and asks about it on a Tuesday, standing in the kitchen doorway with the fridge open behind her the way sixteen-year-olds do.

Baba, what is actually in that case.

And he says: old things.

And she says all right, and goes back to the fridge, because she is sixteen and not interested, and he stands in his own hallway with his keys still in his hand.

Because here is what is true and what he has known for years without ever putting it into a sentence.

There is nothing in that case that matters. He could tell you roughly what is in it. Some documents. A jacket. Two or three things that would make anybody cry for about ninety seconds and then be put back.

The case is not the withheld thing. The case is a picture of the withheld thing, and it is a very accurate one, and he has known that the whole time.

There is one part of his life that is up there. Reachable. Not discussed. Renewed nine times a day for eleven years.

You have a case like that. Yours might not be in a hallway. I am not going to guess what is in it, and this article never will. But you know where it is, and you know it is reachable, and you know you have been walking past it for a long time.

God names the hardest thing last

The first words God speaks to Abram in the whole of Scripture are an instruction to leave, and the shape of the sentence is doing something deliberate.

Now the LORD had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto a land that I will shew thee.Genesis 12:1

Three things, in order. Country. Kindred. Father's house.

Read them as a widening circle running inward. Your country is the outermost: it is enormous and it is impersonal, and leaving it is hard the way weather is hard. Your kindred is closer: extended family, the network, the people who know your name and would notice you gone. Your father's house is the innermost thing in that culture. It is your identity, your inheritance, your standing, the specific room you belong to.

God names them in that order, and the order is from the easiest to the hardest, and the hardest one is last.

You have been asked in an order, and the innermost thing is named last on purpose. That is the written word and not my read of your hallway, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes the first sentence God ever spoke to Abram and lays it in a corridor with a case on top of a wardrobe.

That should be a relief and I want to make sure you hear it as one. God did not open with the father's house. He worked in. There is a sequence in this, and the fact that you are only now standing in front of the innermost thing does not mean you have been failing at the first two for eleven years. It may well mean you have done them.

And He never says where

Now the second half of the verse, which is the half that makes it costly in a way people rarely name.

Unto a land that I will shew thee.

Not: unto Canaan. Not: unto a place I will now describe. Unto a land that I will show you, at some point, once you are going.

So look at the shape of what Abram is holding. He knows, with total precision, what he is being asked to leave. Country, kindred, father's house: those are specified down to the last one. And he has no information whatsoever about the destination.

That is the exact shape of what is on top of your wardrobe. You know precisely what is being asked. You have known for years. What you do not know, and have never been told, is what your life looks like on the other side of handing it over, and that unknown is the whole of what has kept the case up there.

You are being asked in the same shape Abram was, and it is already yours to answer in. Genesis 12 gives the leaving in detail and the destination in a single unspecified clause, and the same Spirit who moved that man out of Ur is the one making it a present fact in a man standing in a hallway with his keys in his hand.

Let me guard this the way it must be guarded.

I have not guessed what is in your case and I am not going to. There is no list in this article of the things it might be, because a list would put four wrong things in your head and one right one, and you already know which one is yours without any help from me.

And you have not lost anything by the eleven years. Abram was seventy-five when that sentence arrived. Nobody in that chapter is described as late. There is no reduced portion for a man who has walked past a wardrobe nine times a day since 2015, and if you are not ready tonight, God is not colder about you tomorrow.