The Correct Map and the Empty Van

For the person whose route was right and who is driving it on their own.

Paul is writing to a church that had become extremely good at being right.

They had knowledge. He says so himself, more than once, and he isn't being sarcastic about it. They could argue, they could distinguish, and they had teachers they could name and positions they could defend. On paper they were the most equipped congregation in the letters.

The room was also in pieces. Factions with names attached, lawsuits between believers, a shared meal that had become a way of demonstrating rank. Every individual in it could tell you exactly why they were correct, and none of them could sit down together.

So in the middle of it he writes a paragraph that has been read at ten thousand weddings and was written for a fight.

And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.1 Corinthians 13:2 (KJV)

Charity there is the old word for love, meaning the ordinary business of caring about a person rather than a point.

You can hold every true position you have and still be driving somewhere on your own. The written Word grants the whole list before it names the emptiness, and the Holy Spirit makes that honesty something you can live inside.

The Route Was Right

He runs the minibus for the walking group, and he had the route argument in February.

Two ways up. His was shorter by a mile and a half, avoided the stile that everybody complains about, and came out at the top with the view on the correct side for the afternoon light. He'd walked both, twice, with a printed map and a pencil.

The other way was the way they'd always gone, because somebody's father used to go that way in the seventies and nobody had ever seriously examined it.

He made the case thoroughly. He made it in the pub, then in an email with the map attached. Then briefly again at the start of the next walk, in front of everybody, which is the part he now thinks about in the van.

He won. The group goes his way now. There are four of them in a twelve seat minibus and the others have started going on Saturdays instead.

Everything, and Nothing

Look at the structure of what Paul does in that verse, because it's unusual and deliberate.

He doesn't attack the knowledge. He builds it up. He takes the most impressive list of spiritual equipment anybody could assemble and he grants every single item on it, including a faith that shifts a mountain, which is not a small concession to make.

Then he says the man holding all of it may be nothing, and he leaves both halves standing. The mountain still moved. The mysteries are still understood. Nothing on the list gets withdrawn.

Being right about the route and being alone in the van are both true at once. The written Word refuses to cancel either half of that, and the Holy Spirit makes it a description you can survive rather than a verdict on you.

A Correct Map With Nobody in the Van

Here's what I'd carry off that road if I could take a single thing away with me.

A route is measured by distance, gradient, surface and time, and by all four of those his was better. He could prove it then and he could prove it now.

But a walking group isn't a route. It's fourteen people who have been putting up with each other since 2009, and the only thing that route was ever for was getting those fourteen people up a hill together. The map was an instrument. The van was the point.

So the moment he won the argument he perfected the instrument and lost what it served. Both halves of that are his own work, done sincerely, with a pencil and a printed map and no malice in it anywhere.

The map was never the point, it was only ever the instrument the van was using. The written Word puts love above all knowledge rather than against it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can fill a van that a good argument emptied.

Nothing Here Says Your Route Was Wrong

Let me be plain, because there's a version of this message that would do harm and I won't write it.

I'm not adjudicating the hill. If your way is shorter and avoids the stile, then it does, and nothing in this message hints that you should quietly concede a point you know to be true to buy people back.

I'm also not telling you to apologize for making the case. You made it honestly, in public, with a map, and the group were adults who could have argued. The cost isn't punishment, and you haven't done anything requiring confession.

You can keep the whole route and still count who isn't in the van. Scripture holds the knowledge and the emptiness in one sentence without resolving either, and the Holy Spirit does the restoring rather than the arbitrating.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.