The First One Since

Everybody in that room knows.

That is the specific weight of this one. It is not that you have to explain anything. It is that no explanation is needed, and therefore nothing will be said, and you will spend an afternoon in a house where the largest fact present is the one nobody is going to mention.

You have been thinking about it since the invitation. Not about whether to go. About the first ninety seconds. The door, the faces, the particular way somebody will say your name.

And you have started, in the last week or so, to prepare a version of yourself to arrive in. Slightly brighter than you are. Fine enough that nobody has to do anything about it.

The prepared version

Let me talk about the prepared version, because it is going to cost you more than the afternoon is worth.

It is built out of kindness. You do not want to be the thing that makes a family gathering heavy. Somebody else was that once, in front of you, and you would rather not be, and there are children in that house, and it is somebody else's day.

All of that is decent and none of it is dishonest. It is simply enormously expensive to hold for four hours, and it does not work, because people can feel a performance even when they cannot name one.

You are able to walk in as you actually are, and arriving unassembled has never once been the same as making a day about yourself. Isaiah 43:19 says behold, I do a new thing, now it shall spring forth, which is the written word putting the new thing in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can carry a person through a doorway without a costume on.

And the people in that room are real. Every one of them has been thinking about the ninety seconds too. Somebody has rehearsed a sentence and will not use it. Somebody else has decided to say nothing and is worried that saying nothing is wrong.

They are not avoiding it because they do not care. Most of them are avoiding it because they care and have no idea what would help.

You are surrounded by people who have all been rehearsing, and a room full of careful silence has never once been a room full of indifference. The Spirit of God is what makes it possible to read a silence generously, and it is written in Isaiah 43 that God is doing a new thing now rather than later.

Behold, I do a new thing

Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. (Isaiah 43:19, King James Version)

Read the tense in the middle of that verse, because it is doing something specific.

Now it shall spring forth. Not eventually. Not when the ground has recovered. Now, in the wilderness, in the desert, in the exact conditions the verse names, which are the conditions where nothing is supposed to grow.

God is not waiting for better ground.

You have a God who is already at work in the worst conditions available, and He has never once required a person to be past something before He would begin. It is written in Isaiah 43:19 that now it shall spring forth, which is the written word placing the new thing inside the wilderness rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one making a way in ground that will not support anything.

And notice the question in the middle. Shall ye not know it. He asks whether they will recognize it, which implies that it will not look like what anybody expected.

A way in the wilderness does not look like the wilderness ending. It looks like a path through terrain that is still exactly as dry as it was.

You are being given a way through rather than a way out, and God has never once promised that the ground would change before the path appeared. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a path visible while everything around it is unchanged, and Isaiah 43 puts the rivers in the desert and leaves the desert there.

What the afternoon is actually for

Here is what I would like you to consider about the four hours ahead of you.

The purpose of that gathering is not for anybody to say the right thing about what happened. Nobody is going to. There is no sentence available that would do it, and if somebody tries, it will probably land badly, and you will forgive them for it in the car.

The purpose of it is that you were in a room with your family. That is the whole of it.

You are permitted to go for no reason except being in the room, and one afternoon with people who know has never once needed a conversation in it to be worth going to. The Holy Spirit is the one who does something in an ordinary room that nobody in it can see, and it is written that God makes a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.

And you should give yourself a way out before you go in. Not because you are fragile, but because a fixed end turns an unbearable open afternoon into a defined one, and a defined one can be walked into.

Decide the time. Tell one person. Then the whole thing has a shape, and you are not standing in a room wondering how long you can hold.

You are able to set an end to it before you begin, and leaving at a time you chose has never once been a failure to face anything. The Spirit of God is what makes a bounded afternoon survivable, and Isaiah 43:19 says the new thing springs forth now, in the ground as it currently is.