Bracing For A Shortfall That Cannot Come

The choir came out into the yard still in their robes, which they are not supposed to do, and nobody has ever once stopped them.

They took over the far end of the tables with their plates and their fans and their opinions, and inside of four minutes they were on Charmaine again about the second verse.

Charmaine sings alto and she has sung alto since she was nineteen and she has never in her life taken a line by herself. She is better than three of the women who do. Everybody in that yard knows it, and the choir has been working on her since Easter, and she keeps saying the same thing, laughing, waving them off with the back of her hand: no, no, get Sharon, Sharon has the top of it.

They got her out of the kitchen doorway eventually and into a chair, and one of the tenors started singing the line at her across two tables until she was laughing so hard she had to put her plate down on the grass.

And in the middle of all that laughing, her face went somewhere else for about two seconds.

She was seventeen. School auditorium, a folding table, a woman with a clipboard who was tired and had eleven more girls to hear. Charmaine sang, and the woman wrote something, and then said out loud, in front of the two girls waiting by the door: very nearly. Very nearly is not the same as good enough, sweetheart.

That was it. There was no cruelty in it. The woman went home and made supper and never thought about it again for the rest of her life.

Charmaine has thought about it approximately once a week for thirty-one years.

And here is what it did, which is the part that matters. It did not stop her singing. She sings all the time. What it did was install something underneath every good thing that has ever happened to her since: a low, patient waiting for somebody to come back with the review. She got the job and waited for the review. She got married and waited for the review. She stands in the alto section on a Sunday morning with her whole chest open and some quiet part of her is still standing by a folding table, waiting for a woman with a clipboard to say: we looked at yours again. Very nearly.

And you know that feeling from the inside, or you would not still be reading.

You have a good week with God and something in you braces. Not dramatically. You would not call it fear. It is more like keeping one ear open. Somewhere in you there is a file with your name on it and a running total in the margin, and you have been waiting years for somebody to come and tell you what it came to and that it was not quite enough.

Sit down here in the shade with the choir. There is something you need to hear about that file.

One word, said out loud, on purpose

There is a moment in John's account that people read straight past because they think they already know what it means.

When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.John 19:30

Most people hear that as a dying man saying I am done. Spent. Over. That is not what the word is.

The word underneath it is a single word, tetelestai, and it is not the language of a man running out. It is the language of a thing brought all the way to its goal. Completed. Carried to the end it was aimed at. And the tense of it does something English struggles to carry: it is finished, and it stays finished, and there is no later moment at which it stops being finished.

So you are not waiting on a review that is still out, because John 19:30 has Jesus using the completed word about the settling itself, and the Holy Spirit is the One who takes that word off a page in a book and lays it over the part of you that keeps one ear open.

The word was said out loud. That matters. He did not think it, and He did not sigh it. John records Him saying it, deliberately, with the last strength He had, at a volume other people heard, which is what a person does when the announcement is the point.

So what is actually in the file

Let me be exact, because this is where relief goes wrong and turns into something careless.

What is finished is the settling. There is no open question about your standing and no running total in any margin anywhere. Nothing you did last week added to it and nothing you did last week took away from it, because it was completed before you ever knew there was a question, and God does not run two systems at once.

For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.Hebrews 10:14

Read that verse slowly, because it holds both halves of this site in one sentence. Perfected, past and finished. Being sanctified, present and ongoing. The same people, at the same time. One thing about them is complete and one thing about them is still moving, and the writer of Hebrews saw no contradiction in that at all.

So you are a finished woman and an unfinished woman in the same sentence, and neither half cancels the other one out. That is not a clever thing I thought of, it is how Hebrews 10:14 is built, and the Spirit does the second half of it without ever reopening the first.

And then he quotes God directly, which is what makes it a term and not an encouragement.

I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.Hebrews 10:17

That is God binding Himself, in the first person, to a specific action. Not I will overlook. Not I will be gracious about. I will remember no more, which is the strongest way a covenant can say that a matter is closed.

You have that as a written clause rather than a hope, and Hebrews 10:17 is where it is recorded, and His Spirit is the One who bears witness to it inside a person, which is exactly how the writer of Hebrews introduces the quotation in the first place.

And your side is still real

Here is the sentence this whole message stands on, and it goes here, in the middle, where you can see both halves at once.

The settling is God's half and it is finished. Your walking is your half and it is not finished, and it was never meant to be, and it is not what holds your place. Both of those are true this morning.

So no, the relief does not mean nothing is asked of you. Something is asked. Walk with Him. Keep His word. Answer when He speaks. Love the people He set beside you. Those are terms and they are real terms.

But now look at what kind of thing they are, because this is the whole turn. They are not installments on the settling. They are the ordinary life of somebody whose place is already secure, the way an alto who is already in the choir turns up to rehearsal. She does not sing to be admitted. She sings because she is in the choir.

You are living out of a place rather than working toward one, because Hebrews 10:14 says perfected and sanctified about the same people in the same breath, and the Spirit is the One doing the sanctifying while you get on with the walking.