This is What's Left

There is a kind of grief that does not look like a funeral. A man sits down with something he has used for a long time. A spool of wire almost gone. A knife that will not take another edge. A truck key that wore the pocket thin. Boots that finally failed in the same crease. He is not writing a journal. He is holding what is left. And the thing in his hands starts telling the truth he has been too busy to say. Brian Hahn sits with that object. Forty years can live in a thing nobody else thinks is holy. The years are not in the cardboard. They are in the work that went out with the wire. Fence. Motor. Boat. Shop. The quiet jobs that never made a speech. When the roll runs low, the calendar becomes visible. Fear can look like thrift. A man can hoard the last coil and call it wisdom. He can also burn the last of it on nothing and call it living. Both miss the same Lord. Moses did not ask for a longer spool. He asked for a heart that could tell time. A mist is still real while it hangs in the morning light. It is not less precious because it will lift. It is more precious because it will. An old tool can tell the truth. It cannot save you. Purpose is not the same thing as usefulness. Scripture honours work. It will not let work sit in God’s chair. You can spend forty honest years and still need mercy at the end of them. You can also waste forty years and still be met by mercy, if you will come. The Cross is not a longer spool. The Gospel is not that you get more wire. The Son of God spent His life on purpose, and none of it was wasted, and He finished the work you cannot finish. Your spool will empty. His work does not. You will not finish every job. You are not required to. You are required to belong to the One who finished the only work that saves. This is not a debate and it is not a rally. A Soft Place to Land is a faith-based conversation that is encouraging and unhurried — a safe space from political anger. You do not have to fake fine. You do not have to keep the last coil as proof you were here. One sentence to carry out of the room: This is what’s left. It is not nothing. It is not everything. It is enough to bring. If the object undoes you, let it. Take the melancholy to God before you take it back to work and bury it. Do not wait for the perfect listener. Love the people in reach. Repair what you broke. If most of the wire is already gone, you may be late to some of the work. You are not late to Christ. The written word behind this conversation lives at jaxsonharlan.com, under the title “This Is What’s Left.” There is a song there too. Come back next time. We will keep the light on. Hosted by Brian Hahn. From Jaxson Harlan Ministry / Jaxson Radio. May you go from here unhurried. May you remember you are held. And if an old object undoes you before Friday, may you bring the empty roll and the coil that is left. The Cross is not a longer spool. It is a finished work. And it is enough.