There used to be something in the room.
You could not have described it to anybody and you never tried. But when he came in you knew, without looking up, and there was a kind of line running between the two of you that made the room a different room.
And at some point in the last few years it stopped. Not dramatically. He comes in now and it is a person arriving.
You have not told him, because how would you begin. And you have not told anybody else, because it sounds like nothing when you say it out loud, and it is not nothing.
I am going to be honest about the limits of this article before we start.
I cannot give you back a perception. Nobody can. If somebody promises to restore a sense you once had, close the page.
What I can do is show you what was actually holding the two of you, because I do not believe it was ever the thread, and I think the confusion between the two has done more damage than the loss.
The bond, and what it is made of
There is a line at the end of a list in Colossians, and I want the metaphor in it.
And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness (Colossians 3:14, King James Version)
The bond. A bond is a physical thing. It is the strap over a load on a truck, the cord round a stack, the thing that stops separate items from becoming separate items again.
And notice what it is made of in that sentence. Charity, which in that older English means love as a practiced thing, an act rather than a sensation.
You are held by a bond made of something acted rather than something felt, and Colossians has never once described it as a perception. Colossians 3:14 makes the bond out of charity and calls it the bond of perfectness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid where a sense has gone.
That is worth setting against the thread. The thread was a perception. It was pleasant and it was probably real, and it was not the strap over the load.
You have never once been held together by what you could sense in a room, and the word puts the bond somewhere a mood cannot reach. The passage builds the bond out of practiced love, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a person which of the two things was carrying weight.
Why perceptions come and go
Let me say something practical about the thread itself, because its departure has been read as meaningful and it may not be.
Perceptions of another person are extremely sensitive to conditions. They change with how much sleep a person is getting, with how many demands are being carried, with whatever else is going on in a body and a year.
They also change with familiarity. A man known for eighteen years does not produce the signal a man known for two produces. That is not the death of anything. It is what happens when a nervous system stops treating something as new.
And they change with attention. You cannot sense a thread while checking for a thread. Watching for it is exactly what prevents it, in the same way that listening for your own heartbeat makes it impossible to forget.
You are looking for a thing that looking prevents, and the searching has never once been able to produce it. Colossians 3:14 puts the bond in practiced love rather than in a sensation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a hunt off somebody who has been running it for years.
You were joined by a promise and by an act of God, and neither of those has ever once been carried by a feeling in a room. It is written that charity is the bond of perfectness, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a covenant steady while a perception is missing.
Say it, and stop reaching for it today
So here is the assignment and there is a stopping in it, which is the part that actually helps.
Say out loud, alone: God joined this. He did it once and it holds.
Then stop reaching for the thread today. When he comes in, do not check. Do not scan the room. Do not run the comparison with how it used to be at the door.
Just let him come in and be a person arriving, and go on with what you were doing.
You are able to stand on a bond you cannot feel, and it has never once required your perception to hold the load. Colossians 3:14 makes the bond out of practiced love, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a hallway where somebody has stopped scanning.
And if you catch yourself checking, and you will, say the sentence again and carry on.
Here is what I believe is going out over somebody this evening.
You are not looking at a marriage that came undone, and a perception that faded has never once been a bond that failed. Colossians 3:14 says charity is the bond of perfectness, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my telling you, who moves a woman off an instrument that was never measuring the load.
And this, which is what I came with.
You are held by a strap made of something practiced, and it has never once needed you to feel it to be doing its work. The word builds the bond out of charity rather than out of a sense in a room, and the same Spirit who moved Colossians is standing in your living room tonight.
Say it. Then stop reaching for it today.
Declare this over yourself
- Thread I cannot feel in the room, you were never the bond itself. Colossians 3:14 says charity is the bond of perfectness, so by the Holy Spirit I stop taking readings at my own front door, in the name of Jesus.
- Two years of checking when he comes in, you are finished tonight. The word makes the bond out of a practiced love rather than a sensation, and by the Spirit of God I am done reading a faded perception as a failed promise.
- Father, You joined this and You strapped it with something that does not depend on what I can sense. Your word says put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness, so by Your Spirit I say out loud tonight that You joined this, and I stop reaching for the thread.
Colossians 3:14
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