I Said Yes at the Funeral

It was in the corridor between the hall and the car park, with a cup and saucer he did not want, and a woman he had known since he was nine put her hand on his forearm and said: you should come back, you know.

And Malu said: yeah. I will.

And he meant it. That is the whole thing. He was not being polite, he was not managing the moment, he stood there in that corridor and something in him moved and he meant it entirely.

That was fourteen months ago.

He is forty-eight.

He has not gone. Not once, and there has been no obstacle, and he has been free on more Sundays than he has not.

What there has been is a series of Saturday nights, about thirty of them, in which he has thought maybe tomorrow somewhere between ten and midnight, and about eleven Sunday mornings where he has been awake at seven and has lain there and then got up at twenty past nine, which is too late.

He does not understand it. He is not a man who says things he does not mean, and he is not a man who cannot get out of bed, and he runs a business that requires him to do about nine difficult things before eight in the morning every day of his life.

And the woman is not chasing him. She would not. She said her one sentence in a corridor and then went and helped with the cups.

There is one more thing.

He has seen her twice since, in the town, and both times she was warm and asked about his mother and did not mention it, and both times he walked away and had about four minutes of feeling something he did not want to name.

He named it in the spring, in the truck, at some traffic lights.

It was relief that she had not asked, and then, immediately underneath, the other thing: she is going to stop asking.

And you may have said yes to somebody. And you may have meant it, and still not gone.

Isaiah says seek Him while He is near, and near is a statement of fact

Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it fourteen months and it was never yours.

You did not lie in that corridor. You never did, and meaning something and not doing it are two different failures and only one of them is a lie. Scripture puts an invitation next to a plain statement about nearness, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a run of good Sundays, who brings a man in. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and you have had it on thirty Saturday nights.

Now hear it, and hear the second half of each line.

Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near.Isaiah 55:6

While he is near.

That is not a threat and it is not a countdown, though people have used it as both. It is a statement about the present condition of things, and it is put there to tell somebody that the conditions are currently good.

And notice the verbs. Seek and call. Neither of them is arrive, neither is attend, and neither requires the person to have got anywhere first. Both are things a man can do from a truck at some traffic lights.

He is near now, and calling is one of the two verbs named. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who does the bringing, and He has never once made Sunday morning the only door.

Now let me be careful here, because there are ditches on both sides and I have no intention of putting you in either.

Nothing here says that woman is going to stop. She may well not, and she has been warm twice in a town without once mentioning it, which is a discipline most people do not have, and Scripture would have you count that as love rather than as a countdown.

And nothing here promises what a Sunday would be like or that it would feel the way that corridor felt. I do not know, and I am not going to describe a welcome I have not seen.

The point is narrower and it is about the fourteen months, and Scripture names two verbs that do not require arriving anywhere, and His Spirit is the one who has kept you awake at seven on eleven Sunday mornings.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. The four minutes after you see her have a name and you found it at the lights.

Relief, and then the other thing underneath. And the other thing is not a warning about her, it is your own heart telling you it still wants this, which is the opposite of what fourteen months of Saturday nights have been telling you about yourself. His Spirit is the one who put that in you at the traffic lights and He was not accusing you of anything.