Over the Wall

He could tell you what they ate on Tuesday.

He is at the parapet on his own roof, forearms on the warm stone, and below and across is the neighbor's courtyard with its lamps already lit, and he has an extraordinary amount of information about that courtyard. He knows the cousin who comes on Thursdays and stays too late. He knows which of the children will not sit down. He knows that the grandmother has taken to sitting on the far side now, in the cooler corner, since the spring. He knows the exact sound the gate makes when the son comes home, and he can tell from that sound whether it has been a good day.

He is not spying. Do not put that word on him and do not put it on yourself. It is a rooftop, and they are down there, and the light is on, and a person looks. Everybody looks. There is nothing wrong with a man who looks over a wall at a lamplit courtyard, and if somebody has made you feel dirty about looking, they were wrong, and that is not what this is.

But here is the thing.

Behind him, four steps behind him, on his own roof, there is a low table with a cloth over it. His own household set it out an hour ago. There is a lamp lit beside it. Under the cloth there is bread that came out of the oven this afternoon, and a bowl of olives, and a jug, and something else that he does not know about because he has not looked, and a girl came up the stairs eight minutes ago and put a dish down and went back for the other one and he did not turn around.

He does not know what is on his own table. He could give you fifteen minutes on the neighbor's evening and he could not tell you, right now, at this moment, without turning, what is under that cloth four steps behind him.

And it is not that his own table is worse. That is what he assumes, and he assumes it without evidence, because he has not looked. It might be better. It might be the same. That is not the point and it was never going to be the point. The point is that a man cannot eat from a courtyard he is looking into. Not because of any rule. Because of the distance. There is no arrangement of the world in which that food arrives on this roof, and every minute he stands at the parapet is a minute the bread behind him goes on cooling under a cloth.

The lamps are lovely down there. The laughter comes up in that particular way that laughter comes up out of a courtyard on a warm evening, half words and half sound.

And the cloth on his own table has not moved.

I think you know this roof. I think you could describe somebody else's life to me tonight in detail, without hesitating, and I think if I asked you what is actually on your table, right now, you would have to go and look.

The commandment is a direction, not a diet

There is a line in the ten that people hear as a scolding and it is not one. I want to hand it to you the way it is actually written.

You shall not covet your neighbor's house, or anything that is your neighbor's.Exodus 20:17

Nine of the ten are about what your hands do. This one is about what happens on a rooftop at evening, inside a person, where nobody can see it, and God put it in the list on purpose. But look at what it actually does. It does not say do not want. It does not say want less, and it does not say your appetite is disgraceful, and it does not say a good man does not look over a wall. It puts a boundary at the edge of one particular yard.

That is a direction, not a diet. God is not shrinking you. He is telling you the one place where hunger cannot be fed, because the food there is genuinely not reachable, and He would rather say so out loud than let you stand at a parapet for eleven years growing hungrier in a direction that has no table in it.

You are hungry in a direction that has no table in it, and that is a location problem and not a character problem. I am not softening the commandment to be nice to you. Exodus 20:17 draws its line around the neighbor's yard and nowhere near your appetite, and the Holy Spirit is the One who takes an old boundary line and turns a man around with it instead of shaming him.

And notice something else about the tenth word. Every other one can be obeyed by not moving. Do not steal, do not kill, do not bear false witness. You can keep those standing still. This one cannot be kept by standing still, because standing still at the parapet is the whole of the problem. The only way to keep it is to turn around, and a turn is a motion toward something, not away from it.

You have a table four steps behind you, and it was set for you by somebody who knows you and it is not a consolation prize. Psalm 16:6 says the lines have fallen for me in pleasant places and I have a beautiful inheritance, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes a line about a portion sound like a hand on a shoulder turning a man on his own roof.

What you actually do not know

Let me say the part that is uncomfortable, and let me say it without any edge in it, because there is no edge in it.

You do not really know their courtyard either.

You know the lamps and the laughter and the sound of the gate. You do not know what the grandmother sat in the cooler corner to get away from. You do not know what the son was carrying when he came through that gate on the day the sound was wrong. Nobody knows a courtyard from a rooftop. What you have been comparing your life against for years is not their life, it is the lit part of it, which is the part that faces up.

I am not saying this to make you feel better by making them smaller. That is a cheap trick and you would see through it by morning. I am saying it because a man at a parapet believes he is looking at something complete, and he is not, and the incompleteness runs in exactly the direction that hurts him most. He compares the whole of his own life, including the four in the morning parts, against the lamplit hour of somebody else's.

You were never looking at a complete thing, and the comparison you have been losing was not a fair fight and it was never a real one. Exodus 20:17 draws the line at the edge of what belongs to your neighbor, and part of what belongs to them is the half of their life you cannot see from up here, and the Holy Spirit is the One who lets a man put down a verdict he has been carrying without having to think less of anybody to do it.

And notice who is keeping the score in this. Not them. They are down there passing a dish and telling a story about the market and have not thought about your roof once this evening. Not God either, who assigns portions rather than rankings. The whole tournament has one participant and one judge and they are the same tired man leaning on warm stone.

You are not behind, and the arithmetic you have been doing on a rooftop is not an accounting God keeps. Scripture says the lines fell for you in pleasant places and the portion is His to assign, and His Spirit is the One who quietly stops a comparison rather than winning it.