You Stopped Minding

The list went up on a Thursday and you read it on your phone, standing in a shop, waiting to pay.

Six names. You knew four of them before you looked. You had a private guess about the fifth, and you were wrong about the fifth, and the sixth was somebody you had not thought of and is, honestly, a good choice.

Your name was not on it. You did not expect your name to be on it.

Here is the thing you noticed, standing in that shop with a basket in your hand, and it is the reason you are reading this rather than getting on with your evening.

You did not feel anything.

Not a flicker. Not the little drop in the chest. Not the two minutes of arguing with the list in your head that you would have had at thirty, or even at forty. You read six names, you put the phone in your pocket, you paid for the things, and you were thinking about something else before you got to the car.

And halfway home it caught up with you, and what it said was: that is not peace.

You have been telling yourself for about six years that you have made your peace with where you sit in that community. And on Thursday, in a shop, you found out what you actually have, which is the absence of expectation, and those two things look identical from the outside and are not remotely the same.

Peace is a full thing. What you have is a room with the furniture taken out.

Paul says something startling about the men at the top

There is a line in Galatians where Paul is describing the leaders in Jerusalem, the ones who had actually walked with Jesus, and he says a thing about them that would get a person removed from most committees.

But of these who seemed to be somewhat, whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me: God accepteth no man's person.Galatians 2:6

Read the middle clause slowly. Whatsoever they were, it maketh no matter to me.

He is not being rude about them. He goes on to say they gave him the right hand of fellowship and he honors them. What he is refusing to do is let their standing function as a measurement of his.

And then he gives the ground, and the ground is not confidence, it is doctrine: God accepteth no man's person. God does not receive a face. He does not weigh reputations. The whole apparatus of who seems to be somewhat has no standing in heaven at all.

So take this now, before anything else, because you have been standing in a shop discovering something about yourself. You are received by God on exactly the terms the six on that list are received, and it is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who sealed it, and it has never once been adjusted by a name appearing or not appearing anywhere.

Numbness is not humility and it is not maturity

Now I have to be careful, because there is a real thing that looks like this and is good, and I do not want to talk you out of it.

There is a genuine settledness that comes with years. A man does stop needing what he needed at thirty. Ambition does quieten in a healthy soul and that quietening is a grace and I am not calling it a wound.

But you know the difference, and you found it out on Thursday.

The healthy kind still feels things. A man at peace reads a list, notices a small pang, and lets it go in about nine seconds, and the nine seconds are proof that he is still alive to the question. What happened to you was that there was no pang to let go of.

That is not maturity. That is a hope that has been disappointed enough times that it has stopped presenting itself for duty, and it has taken some other things with it on the way out, which is why you have also stopped putting yourself forward for anything, and stopped forming opinions about the direction of things, and stopped, if you are honest, praying about that part of your life at all.

You are accepted and used and seated in that house. The written word says God does not receive a man's face, and the Holy Spirit gave the gifts that are in you and has not withdrawn one of them.

The hall that would not sell a row

In 1895 a man named Phineas Bresee opened a plain hall near the middle of Los Angeles and settled one thing about it in advance: not a single seat in that room could be rented.

There is a detail in that story that matters more than the rule itself. He did it at the founding. Not as a reform, not after a controversy, not in response to somebody being hurt. Before anybody sat down.

Because he understood the direction things go on their own. A room left alone develops a top and a bottom, and the people at the bottom do not usually complain, and that is exactly the danger. They stop complaining. They stop expecting. And a church can look completely peaceful while a quarter of the people in it have quietly stopped presenting anything for consideration.

That is a congregation with no conflict in it and no life either, and it is a far worse condition than a congregation having an argument.

You are seated on the same ground as anybody in that building. It is written, the Holy Spirit did the seating, and the quiet in you is not evidence against it.