He Has Never Put a Nail in a Wall

There are eleven of them in a box in the closet and he can tell you what is in every one. A photograph of his father at the shipyard. A print somebody gave him in 1998 that he has never disliked. A picture of a bay that is not near anywhere he has lived.

The box has been in five apartments. It has been carried up stairs, put down, and never once opened for its actual purpose. He has looked at the contents twice in fifteen years, both times while packing.

He is fifty. He has a good job now, and the current place is fine, and he could put a nail in that wall this evening and nobody in the world would say anything about it. That is the part that has started to bother him, because a man who could and does not is doing something, and he cannot say what.

What he has told himself, when he has thought about it at all, is practical. Nail holes cost you at the end. You have to fill them and repaint. It is not worth it for somewhere temporary. Every one of those sentences is true and every one of them has been true for fifteen years in five different places, and at some point the reason stopped being about the walls.

Some people grew up not knowing where they would be living, and their bodies keep certain habits long after the situation changes. I am going to leave it at that description, deliberately. I am not going to explain this man by narrating his childhood back to him, and I am not going to hand anybody a verdict on his family, because I do not know them, and neither does anyone reading this, and a stranger's history is not mine to prosecute.

Somebody does the placing

Let me put a line down and notice who the actor in it is.

God setteth the solitary in families: he bringeth out those which are bound with chains.Psalm 68:6

Setteth. It is a placing verb, and the subject of it is God. The solitary do not place themselves in that sentence and they are not told to go and find somewhere. Somebody puts them.

And the Hebrew behind families is a household word, closer to a dwelling place with people in it than to a bloodline. It is not primarily about relatives. It is about being situated among people, which is exactly the thing a man with a box of frames has quietly decided not to attempt.

You are placed, and the placing was done by God rather than by how permanent your address turns out to be. That is not a warm thought handed to a man with a closet full of cardboard. It is what is written in Psalm 68, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and puts it under somebody in a fifth apartment. The frames are in a box. The placing already happened.

And notice the second half of the verse, which belongs to the first. He brings out those who are bound. The psalm pairs placing with releasing, as though they are two halves of one act, which for a man who has been carrying a box for fifteen years they very much are.

You have been brought out of something as well as put somewhere, and the psalm says both in one line. Psalm 68:6 is where the word puts it, and His Spirit is the one who makes an old psalm land in a living room with nothing on the walls.

The nail is not a test of faith

Now the part this category exists for, and it needs saying before the practical part or the practical part becomes a demand.

Hanging a picture is not a spiritual exercise and refusing to is not a sin. Nobody is going to be graded on a wall. If a man reads this and does not put a nail in anything, nothing has failed, and I want that said clearly because otherwise a small suggestion turns into one more thing to be inadequate about.

What I want to name instead is what the empty wall has been doing, because I think it has been misfiled. It is not caution about paint. It is a very small, very reasonable arrangement in which nothing is committed to until the situation is certain, and since the situation is never certain, nothing is ever committed to.

And that arrangement has a cost that nobody has ever put a number on. Fifteen years of walls. Five apartments of not quite living somewhere.

Thou hast set my feet in a large room.Psalm 31:8

That is David, in a psalm about being in trouble, and the phrase is about being placed somewhere with room in it. Set is the same kind of verb. Somebody put him there.

You were set somewhere with room in it, and the setting did not wait for the lease. Psalm 31:8 is where that stands, and it is the Spirit who moves that from a page into a body in a rented living room.

You are living here right now, in this apartment, whatever happens next year. It is written that God sets the solitary in families and brings out the bound, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that true in a man who has carried the same box up five sets of stairs.

If any of this ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor plainly about the years and the box. Habits that outlive their situation respond well to real help from real people, and being placed by God has never been a reason to work it out alone in a closet.