I Was Somebody In My Country

In your own country you were somebody.

People came to you. There was a word for what you did and everybody knew what the word meant, and when you said it at a table, the table understood.

And here the word does not travel. The paper does not travel. And a woman of twenty six is showing you where the mops are kept, kindly, slowly, because she has no way of knowing what she is talking to.

That is the injury, and it is not about the mops.

You are the same man who did that work, and a border has never once reached inside a person and taken out what he knew.

I want to say one thing before the rest, and I want it said plainly rather than warmly.

This is a real loss and I am not going to talk you out of it. Something genuine was taken. It was taken by a system rather than by a person, which somehow makes it harder, because there is nobody to be angry at.

So this article is not going to tell you it does not matter. It matters.

What it will do is separate two things you have been carrying as one: the standing, which was taken, and the capability, which was not.

There was there with us a young man

There is a line in Genesis where a man is finally remembered, and the phrasing tells you everything about how long he had been overlooked.

And there was there with us a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard; and we told him, and he interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream did he interpret. (Genesis 41:12, King James Version)

There was there with us a young man, an Hebrew, servant to the captain of the guard.

Listen to how he is described. Not by his name. By his nationality and by whose servant he was.

That is a man being described by his position rather than by his capability, by somebody who had watched him do the thing and had still not thought of him for two years.

You are described accurately in that sentence and described poorly at the same time, and a man named by his position has never once been a man whose capability had gone anywhere. Genesis 41:12 says there was there with us a young man, an Hebrew, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept the dismissive phrasing in the record rather than improving it.

And then look at the second half of the same verse. He interpreted to us our dreams; to each man according to his dream did he interpret.

The capability is right there in the same sentence as the dismissal. The man who is describing him as a servant is, in the same breath, describing him doing something nobody else in Egypt could do.

You have your capability sitting in the same sentence as the description that misses it, and a man doing the work has never once been the same as a man being seen doing it. The Holy Spirit is the one who put both halves in one verse, and it is written in Genesis 41:12 exactly that way.

Two years of being unmentioned

Let me stay with that account a minute longer, because there is something in it for a man in his fifties.

The butler forgot him for two full years. That is in the chapter before. Not a week. Two years, in a prison, by a man whose life he had helped.

And when he was finally remembered, it was not because anybody had come to value him properly. It was because a situation arose where his particular capability was the only thing that would do.

You are in a season where the capability has not been asked for yet, and a thing nobody has needed this month has never once stopped being a thing you can do. The written word has a man overlooked for two years and then called for in an afternoon, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds a person through the unmentioned part.

And I am not going to turn that into a promise, because this site does not do that. I am not telling you that a summons is coming next month.

What I am saying is that the two years did not do anything to what was in him. He was the same man on the last day of them as the first.

You have not been diminished by the waiting, and time spent unused has never once been the same as time spent losing something. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man intact through a long stretch, and it is written in Genesis 41:12 that he interpreted for each man according to his dream, before any of the waiting had begun.

Take it, and say both halves

So the assignment, and for you it has two sentences rather than one.

Take the shift, and tell one person plainly what you are doing and why. Genesis 41:12 records a man's work in the same breath as the description that misses him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present while a man says out loud what he has taken on.

And say both halves. What you do now, and what you did there.

Not as a complaint and not as a claim. Two facts, said in one breath, by a man who is not embarrassed by either of them.

I work nights at the warehouse, and at home I ran a department of forty people.

You are able to say two true things in one sentence, and a man stating his own history has never once been the same as a man complaining about his present. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a man a level voice for both halves, and the written word holds the servant and the interpreter together without apology.

And say it to somebody here, in this country. That matters. The people at home already know. It is the room you are standing in now that does not.

You are able to be known where you actually live, and a man whose history is unknown to everybody around him has never once been more at home for keeping it quiet. The Holy Spirit is the one who opens a conversation in a new place, and it is written in Genesis 41 that the remembering happened where he was rather than where he came from.