Waiting to Be Let Back In

He has been waiting nine years for a thing that does not exist, and he worked that out in March, and it has not helped as much as you would think.

Ilan is sixty-two.

There was a period, about a decade ago, of roughly two years, and it involved money and a business and somebody else's family, and it was not criminal and it was not adultery, and Ilan will not go further than that even in his own head, and he has made restitution twice over and nobody is owed anything.

He stopped going during it, of his own accord, and nobody asked him to.

And in the nine years since, what he has been waiting for is somebody to say that the matter is closed.

Not a friend saying it. He has friends and two of them have said versions of it and it made no difference at all.

He means somebody in a position to say it. Formally. On behalf of the thing rather than on their own account.

And here is what he worked out in March, sitting in his own kitchen at five in the morning, which is when he does his thinking: that in his tradition there is no such office and no such procedure, and there never has been, and everyone he has ever known in it would be genuinely puzzled by the request.

There is nobody to issue it. There is no form of words. If he walked in tomorrow, the entire mechanism available to that community is that people would say hello.

He has organized nine years around waiting for an event that nobody in that building has ever attended or performed.

And knowing that, in March, at five in the morning, did not get him through the door in April or May or any of the months since.

Because underneath the procedural question there is another one, and Ilan has been circling it for nine years: if there is no gate, then there was never anybody keeping me out, and then what have I been doing?

And you may be waiting on something formal. And it may be that there is nobody anywhere whose job it is to give it to you.

God says He will do the searching Himself

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

You are not awaiting readmission. You never were, and there is no gate and there never was one. Scripture has God stating that He will not delegate the searching, and He puts the word myself in it, and it is the Holy Spirit, not a form of words from an office that does not exist, who goes and finds a person. Set it down here on this step. It is heavy and you have had it at five in the morning for nine years.

Now hear it, and hear the emphasis.

For this is what the Sovereign LORD says: I myself will search for my sheep and look after them.Ezekiel 34:11

I myself will search.

The emphatic pronoun is doing the work. The chapter around it is about shepherds who did not do their job, and the response is not the appointment of better shepherds first. It is God saying He will go and do it personally.

And notice the verb is search, which is what somebody does when they do not yet have the thing, and it is His action rather than the sheep's, and no procedure is described anywhere in it.

He does the searching Himself and He does not delegate it. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who finds a person, and He has never once required an office to release anybody.

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 your two years were small or that restitution did not matter. It mattered a great deal, and you made it twice over, and Scripture takes restitution seriously and would have nobody wave it away as a technicality.

And nothing here says the people in that building would handle your arrival well or badly. I do not know them. Some communities do this beautifully and some do not, and I am not going to promise you a room I have never stood in.

The point is narrower and it is about the office you have been waiting on, and Scripture has God declining to delegate the search, and His Spirit is the one who has been doing it at five in the morning.

Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. The question underneath is the real one and it deserves an answer.

If there is no gate, what have I been doing? You have been serving your own sentence, in a kitchen, at five in the morning, for nine years, because nobody else would impose one and something in you needed one imposed. His Spirit has been in that kitchen the whole time and He was never the one holding the sentence open.