I Stopped Putting My Hand Up

Nineteen weeks. She counted back through the diary because she wanted to know exactly.

Cherise used to be one of the ones who spoke. Not constantly, and never long, but if a question was put to that room she would often have something and she would say it, and for about six years that was simply who she was on a Wednesday.

Now she does not.

It did not stop after a bad moment. Nobody shut her down. She has been over it and there was no incident, which is part of what makes it hard to describe to anybody.

What happened is that she began to notice a pattern.

She would say her thing, and it would be about a sentence and a half long. And then two or three other people would say their things, and theirs would run to a paragraph, and would contain a reference, and would connect the passage to something else, and would end in a way that opened another question.

And hers would be sitting there, at the front of that, a sentence and a half, complete.

Nobody has ever said anything about it. She wants that on the record. The people in that room are kind and two of them are among her closest friends.

But somewhere around the fourth year she started saying her thing later in the discussion, so it would not be first. Then she started waiting to see whether somebody else said something near it, so she could agree instead. Then she started only speaking when asked directly.

And then, nineteen weeks ago, she stopped.

She is forty-three.

And the sentence she has never said out loud, which arrived while she was counting back through the diary, is that she has plenty to say. She has as much as she ever had. It is just always going to be a sentence and a half, and she has concluded that a sentence and a half is not a contribution.

And you may know that room. You may have stopped in stages the same way, over years, without one moment you could point to.

God is on record about whom He chose to be rich in faith

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

You are not short of a contribution. You never were. Scripture states plainly whom God has chosen and what He has made them rich in, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the length of anybody's paragraph, who gives faith. Set it down here in that hall. It is heavy and it has been on the chair beside you every Wednesday.

Now hear the sentence, and notice that it is put as a question expecting agreement.

Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom He promised those who love Him?James 2:5

Rich in faith.

That is a wealth word, and it is attached to people the world has already assessed and marked down, and the assessing is named in the same sentence so that nobody can miss what is being contrasted.

And notice that it is a choosing again. Not an accident, not God making the best of it. Chosen, deliberately, and the riches are located in faith rather than in equipment.

You are somewhere in that sentence. Right now, at forty-three, nineteen weeks into not speaking. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who supplies faith, and He has never once distributed it by paragraph length.

Now let me be careful here, because there is a ditch on this side and I have no intention of putting you in it.

Nothing here says the people who speak in paragraphs are performing. They are not. Two of them are your closest friends and you would trust them with anything, and what they bring has taught you things and you have said so. Scripture honors that work and His Spirit is the one who gave it to them.

The references are real. The connections are real work. Scripture is not against any of it and God has given some people that and it serves rooms like yours every week.

And nothing here says you should go back next Wednesday and speak, or that staying quiet has been cowardice. It has not. It happened in stages over years and there was no moment and you did not decide it.

The point is only about what you concluded, and Scripture locates the riches somewhere other than in length, and His Spirit is the one who hands them out.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. A sentence and a half is not a shortfall.

It is what a thing looks like when somebody has already boiled it down, and boiling down is work, and the reason yours arrived complete is that you had done that work before you opened your mouth. His Spirit was in every one of those sentences and He has never once wished any of them longer.