Thirty Years Of Saying It To Other People

Ada has pushed the cart on the third floor for thirty years, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and she is the one they send in.

Not because she is trained. She never was. Because she knows how to come through a door. She has a way of setting a cup down on the rolling table and pulling the chair around so she is beside the bed instead of over it, and she talks about the weather until the person is ready, and then, if they want it, she says the sentence.

She has said it in every room on that hall. She said it to a logger with both legs pinned. She said it over a girl of nineteen the night before a surgery nobody was hopeful about. She said it three times in one week the winter the flu went through the county. He will never leave you. He said so Himself. He is not going anywhere, honey.

That Thursday the sun came all the way into the day room, the long low sun that gets in about four and makes even that room look like somebody's front parlor. A young mother was waiting on word about her son and the tea went round twice and by the end of it the whole family was laughing at something the grandfather said, which is how Ada knows the fear has loosened its grip for a minute.

Then the young mother turned to her, not unkindly, and asked, "Do you believe all that for yourself, or just for us?"

Ada laughed and said something about needing to get the cart back before five.

But she sat in the parking lot a good while before she turned the key.

Thirty years. She could not think of one time in thirty years that anybody had said it to her. She had carried the sentence up and down that hall like a woman carrying a letter, and it never once occurred to her to look at the front of the envelope.

And that is you, or something close enough to it. You have been the one who says it. At the bedside, on the phone at eleven at night, in the fellowship hall with your hand on somebody's back. You are steady, and everybody knows it, and you have said God's own commitments out loud over other people until the words are worn smooth in your mouth.

Nobody has ever turned around and said one to you.

The sentence has a name on the front of it

Here is one of them. Read it slow, because it is not a summary of God's general attitude. It is God quoting Himself:

for we are the temple of the living God; as God said, I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.2 Corinthians 6:16

Notice the grammar before you notice anything else. God did not say He is fond of people. He said what He would do and then bound Himself to doing it. I will dwell. I will walk. I will be their God. Three commitments in one breath and not one condition hung on the end of any of them.

And you are inside that them. Not near it, not helping other people get to it. Inside it. I am not being warm at you: 2 Corinthians 6:16 says God spoke that sentence over a people rather than over a project, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that written line and turns it around so the front of the envelope has your own name on it.

Say them the way you say them to other people

Here is a second one. It is the sentence Ada carries up and down that hall, and likely the one worn smoothest in your own mouth:

I will never leave you nor forsake you.Hebrews 13:5

That is a quotation inside a quotation. God said it to Joshua before the man had done anything, and the letter to the Hebrews reaches back and picks it up and hands it forward, which is exactly what you do at a bedside, and it is what somebody ought to have done for you a long time ago.

And a third, and I want you to sit with this one, because it was spoken to people who had gotten old:

Even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.Isaiah 46:4

Read the verbs. Made, bear, carry, save. Every one of them His, and the last two in the same clause, so nobody could split the carrying off from the saving and hand the carrying back to the person.

You have been the one doing the carrying so long that being carried feels like a job you are not qualified for. But Isaiah 46:4 is written down and it is not addressed to the strong, and the Spirit who inspired that line is not going to make an exception for the woman with the cart.

Which half is settled, and which half is yours

Say it plainly, because this is the part that goes fuzzy.

His half is settled. The three sentences above are not predictions and they are not encouragements. They are commitments made by God in the first person, and they hold whether you feel them on a Thursday or not. Nothing you do this week strengthens them and nothing you fail at this week weakens them.

Your half is your response, and it is real. In the same passage, right after those words, comes the ask:

let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God.2 Corinthians 7:1

That is a term. It is asked. But look where it stands: after the commitments, not before them, and Paul says plainly that it is because of them. The response comes out of the settled half. It never once holds the settled half up.

So take the order of it, because the order is the thing you have had backward for thirty years. You are standing on commitments that were made before one thing was asked of you, and that is not my kindness added on top, it is the plain sequence of 2 Corinthians 6:16 and 7:1 sitting one after the other on the page. His Spirit holds that order steady in a person, and He has never once made a woman earn her way up to a sentence God had already spoken over her.

So here is the whole thing in one sentence, and you may write it in the front of your Bible if you like. God's commitments are settled and are His to keep; your response is real and is yours to give; and only one of those two is holding this covenant together.