The Probation Nobody Put Me On

Effie turned up at nine on the Saturday and did not ring first, because Joss would have said not today.

She let herself in the way she has done for eleven years and found the curtains still half shut at nine in the morning, and Joss on the end of the sofa with her hair up and yesterday's mug beside her, doing an admirable impression of a woman who was simply having a slow start.

Effie did not ask what had happened on Wednesday. She has never once asked. She looked at the curtains and then at Joss and said, "Get your shoes."

The river path is ten minutes from the door and the morning was one of those bright cold ones where the water is going hard silver and everybody's dog is delighted. They walked. Effie talked about nothing whatsoever for about half a mile, which is a mercy and also a skill.

Then Joss said, to the river rather than to her, "I am doing my two weeks."

"Your what?"

"Two weeks. I do not pray out loud. I do not put my hand up for anything. I sit at the back and I do not sing. Two weeks, and then I am alright again."

Effie kept walking for a bit.

"Who sentenced you?"

Joss opened her mouth and nothing came out.

Because there is no judge. There never has been. There is no clerk with a list, no hearing, no date circled on anything. She writes the sentence herself, in her own hand, on a Wednesday, and then she serves it, and she has been doing it for something like twenty years, and by a rough count she has served about forty of them.

"Show me the bit where it says two weeks," Effie said.

And Joss laughed. Out loud, on a public path, with a heron watching and a spaniel going past, that awful raw relieved laugh a person does when a thing they have carried alone turns out to be made of nothing. She put her hands over her face and laughed and Effie stood there grinning at her and the river went on being silver.

"There is no bit," Joss said.

"No," said Effie. "There is a different bit. Come on, we are getting to the bridge before eleven."

And you have a version of the two weeks. Yours might be three days or a season or a permanent low-grade sitting at the back. Nobody put you there. You put yourself there, on the honest and sincere assumption that somebody had to, because it did not seem right that nothing should happen. So let us go and read the bit that is actually written, because there is one, and it is not the one you have been serving.

Who sentenced you

Let us be precise about what the self-imposed probation actually is, because it is not humility and it is not repentance, though it wears both of their coats.

It is a sentence handed down by a court that does not exist, served by a person who volunteered to be both the defendant and the judge, in a case nobody brought. And the reason it feels so right is that it satisfies something real. Something did happen on Wednesday. It is not nothing. A conscience that says so is working correctly, and I am not going to talk you out of yours.

But look at what the document does with that, in God's own handwriting, spoken over Moses on a mountain while a covenant was being written back out on stone.

The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.Exodus 34:6 and 7

That is God saying His own name out loud, choosing His own words, at the exact moment the terms were being put back into writing. Merciful. Gracious. Slow to anger. Forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, three words for it, as though He meant to leave no category out.

So the sentence you are serving was not handed down by Him. You are standing inside a covenant whose author introduced Himself with the word merciful before He said anything else about Himself, and I am not being kind to you here, I am reading you Exodus 34:6, and the Holy Spirit is the One who takes a name like that and speaks it over a woman with her curtains half shut.

What the terms actually provide

Now here is the clause, and notice where it sits, because the placement is the whole point.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.1 John 2:1

Both halves in one breath, in one verse, from the same pen. Do not sin. And, if you do, here is who stands up for you, by name.

That is what mercy written in looks like. It is not an emergency exception negotiated afterward by somebody sympathetic. It was drafted into the terms, in advance, by an author who knew exactly who He was making the covenant with, and He put the provision on the page before you ever needed it.

And He named the Advocate. Not a principle, not a policy, a person: Jesus Christ the righteous. There is a defense counsel written into your covenant and He has never lost, and while you were sitting in the half dark composing a sentence against yourself, He was already standing.

You have an Advocate whose name is written into the document, and that is not a feeling, it is 1 John 2:1, and the Spirit is the One who lets a person hear a written clause as something said about her.

And your response is real

Now do not let the relief run past the other half, because this page will not.

Look again at what John wrote. I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. He did not delete that when he added the advocate. The instruction stands. Something is genuinely asked of you inside this covenant, and mercy does not shrink it into nothing, and the Spirit who comforts is also the One who leads.

But here is the difference, and it is the difference between a covenant and a probation. What is asked of you is a response, and it is asked of a person who is standing inside, in good standing, with an Advocate on His feet. It is not a sentence you serve in order to be readmitted, because you were never removed, and there is no readmission process anywhere in these terms because there was never an expulsion.

So here is the sentence this whole site exists to say plainly, and it goes here in the middle of the teaching, not tucked at the bottom. God's mercy is the settled half. It is written in, named, sworn, and it holds without any contribution from you, including the contribution of feeling sorry enough. Your response is the other half. It is genuinely asked, it genuinely matters, and it is not the thing holding the covenant up.

You were never on probation. You were on a path with a heron and a spaniel and a friend who would not ask, and Exodus 34:6 was already true about the God you were hiding from, which is exactly why the Holy Spirit sends people to knock on doors on Saturday mornings.