The Word You Do Not Have to Hold

The shutters come down one at a time along the row, and the whole street smells of cumin and wet cardboard and the last of the oranges.

She has been on that pitch since seven. Sacks of rice at the front, jars of honey stacked three high, trays of dates and dried figs, the scoops in the cardamom and the cumin worn smooth on one side because she is right handed and has been for thirteen years. And under the till tray, in a plastic bag so it does not take up the damp, an A5 notebook with an elastic band round it and four colors of tab down the edge.

She fed three people out of it today and none of them had to ask. The young man who comes and stands at the end of the trestle and buys nothing gets his while she is straightening the figs, and she gives it to him the way you say a thing you have lived on rather than the way you read off a page. The woman from the flower pitch two along gets hers over the top of a crate. The older man who comes every Saturday for a quarter of dates gets his in the middle of a conversation about his knees, and he goes off down the row still saying it under his breath.

Then the market packs down. Somebody's radio is on in a van, and there is shouting up and down the row that is not shouting, only the way people talk over an engine. She sits on an upturned crate with the notebook open on her knee while the crates go past her onto the van, and in the pocket of the coat hanging off the stall frame there is a card with a hospital's name printed on it and a time on it for the morning.

Her hand goes into the tabs. Same hand, same order, the movement it has made ten thousand times. She goes through the whole thing twice with people laughing four feet away from her. Every word on every page is true, and not one of them will take her weight.

And you are the one they come to. That is the part nobody on that row would believe if you told them, which is precisely why you never have. You take the Tuesday group in somebody's front room and you could talk for forty minutes without a note and people would go home fed. You know a thousand verses. And tonight, with the card in that coat and the shutters coming down around you, you cannot hold on to one of them.

A store cupboard is a wonderful thing, and nobody has ever stood on one

Let me say the kind thing first, because it also happens to be the true thing. The notebook is not the problem. Nobody is going to stand over you tonight and tell you that you have read too much, or that you should have prayed more and studied less, or that all this gathering was your head getting in the way of your heart. That is a cheap sermon and it is not the one you are getting. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Deuteronomy 33:27, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

You did not collect all that out of vanity. You collected it because people kept arriving at your elbow with something broken in their hands, and you wanted there to be bread in the house when they came. Where I come from that is the whole of hospitality: you keep the shelf stocked so that nobody who knocks goes away hungry, and you stock it years before anybody knocks. Thirteen years of colored tabs is thirteen years of somebody else's worst night, answered. God watched you write every one of them down.

But here is the weight, and I am not going to walk around it and pretend I did not see it sitting there. A store cupboard is a wonderful thing, and nobody has ever stood on one. Tonight you do not need supply. You need floor.

And the reason no page will take your weight is not that your faith has thinned out. It is that you are being asked to grip with hands that are already full of tomorrow. Nobody grips well at this hour. That is not a verdict on you, it is a description of hands. Scripture holds that ground in Deuteronomy 33:27, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

So here is one line. Not a shelf of them. One, chosen for you, for tonight, for the coat with the card in the pocket.

The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms.Deuteronomy 33:27

Read where the arms are.

Not out ahead of you, where you would have to reach them. Not above you, where you would have to climb. Underneath. This is an old man's last blessing over the tribes before he dies, the final thing he has left to give anybody, and the picture he reaches for is not a hand held out for you to catch. It is arms already under.

Which means the holding was never the part being asked of you. You are not hanging on. You are being held, and being held is not the same labor as hanging on. One of them costs a strength you do not have at this hour. The other costs nothing at all, because it was never your strength doing it in the first place. This rests on Scripture in Deuteronomy 33:27, and on the Holy Spirit who makes what is written a living thing.

And this is not a blessing that expired with the people it was first spoken over. The eternal God has not aged a day since Moses opened his mouth. He did not slide His arms under one generation and quietly withdraw them once that lot were settled, because what is underneath you is not a scheme He is running, it is who He is. Refuge is not something God does when He has the capacity. It is a thing He is called.

And it is for you. Not for the composed version of you who serves everybody down that row. For the one on the upturned crate with her coat still hanging off the stall frame. There is a particular ache in being the one who feeds and never sits down, and God has never once been confused about which one you are. He is not looking for the teacher tonight. He has been underneath you the entire time you were searching for something to stand on. Scripture already said it in Deuteronomy 33:27, and the Holy Spirit is the one doing the work, not the sentence.