The Hill on the Five Forty

The five forty is never full, and she always takes the seat over the wheel on the right hand side, because that is the side the hill is on.

Dark still. The heater ticking under the seat. Four other people on the whole bus and none of them talking: a young man asleep against the window with his hood up, two women in scrubs at the back who got on together and stopped talking three stops ago, the driver with his coffee wedged in beside him. The city is not awake yet and the bus moves through it like it is trying not to wake it.

She cleans an office building on the far side of town, floors three through six, six years now, and she is good at it in the way nobody notices, which is the whole art of it. In her coat pocket, folded once, is the card with the date on it. It has been in that pocket since Tuesday. She does not need to look at it. She has not stopped looking at it.

Because on Tuesday a room said a thing to her. She sat in a chair with the paper cover crinkling under her, and somebody kind, somebody trained, somebody who did not enjoy saying it, said the thing. She said thank you. Then she came out and stood on the sidewalk in the cold and could not remember, for a second, which way the bus stop was.

And since Tuesday that sentence has been running. At the sink. On the stairs. Under the vacuum. It has been said over her four hundred times in four days, in her own voice, and hers is the only voice that has been in the room.

Then, at the corner of Vernon Street, the bus swings left and the hill is there. It is there every morning: a long dark ridge with the radio mast on top, black against the first gray. She has looked at that hill for six years the way a person looks at weather. This morning she looks at it and something in her goes quiet and asks a question she has never asked. Not what the room said. She knows that one to the comma. The question is what heaven said.

And she cannot answer it. Not one line. Not one word. She has said the room's sentence over herself four hundred times, and she cannot tell you a single thing God has said about the same body.

That is you, perhaps, in your own seat by your own window, with your own folded card in your own pocket. You could recite Tuesday in your sleep. And the other sentence, the one God spoke, has never once been read out loud over you, not by anybody, not by you, and somewhere in the last four days a quiet conclusion moved in and made itself at home: that heaven has nothing on file about this.

Four hundred times in her own voice

Let me be plain about the room first, because I am not going to ask you to fight it.

What was said in that room is true, and it was said by people who trained for years to be able to say it, and the care they are giving you is a mercy whether or not anybody in that building says His name out loud. Nothing on this page tells you to stop it, change it, skip it or set it against prayer. Keep your appointments. The God who hears you is not in competition with the people looking after your body, and anybody who sets those two against each other is not doing you a kindness.

But hear me now. That sentence has been said over your body four hundred times, and it has been said in your own voice, at the sink, on the stairs, at three in the morning. The other sentence, the one God spoke, has been said over that same body how many times? Say the number out loud. For most of us it is zero. Not because we do not believe it. Because nobody ever said it in the room, and a body that hears one word four hundred times and the other word not at all will begin to take the first word for the last word.

That is not a faith problem. That is a room with one voice in it.

For verily I say unto you, That whosoever shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those things which he saith shall come to pass; he shall have whatsoever he saith.Mark 11:23

Look at what Jesus does. He does not tell the man to study the mountain, measure it, or make his peace with it. He tells him to say something to it. The mountain gets spoken to. That is the instruction, and it is the one thing most of us have never once done in our whole lives.

You are a woman with a mouth and a word from God to put in it, and on a dark bus that is not a small thing. I did not think that up on my own. Mark 11:23 is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a sentence Jesus said on a road outside Jerusalem and lays it down over the engine noise of the five forty.

The hill is not what you think it is

Now let me tell you what the mountain actually is, because getting this wrong is how good people end up shouting at their own bodies.

The mountain is not the part of your body the card is about. It is not the room, the people in it, or the care they give. The mountain is a sentence, and the sentence is this: heaven has nothing to say about me. That is what has been sitting on your chest since Tuesday. That is your ridge on Vernon Street. And Jesus said the ridge is spoken to.

Somebody has already used the next clause of that verse on you like a stick, so let me take it out of their hand. Shall not doubt in his heart. Somebody read you that and told you the reason nothing has moved is that a doubt got in at two in the morning. Nobody failed to have enough faith here. That sentence is not in the book and it is not true, and it is not going to be said over you on my page. Doubt in that verse is a divided verdict, a man saying one thing with his mouth while holding the opposite as settled fact. A frightened woman who says the word anyway is not divided. She is brave. Jesus never once turned to a shaking person and billed them for the shaking.

So here is the pit, and I want you to see the bottom of it. The pit is not that God has been silent. The pit is that you have never heard Him speak over you, and so you quietly filed Him under nothing to say. He has plenty to say. It was written down long before there was a bus route, and it is in the house, on a shelf, in a book with soft corners, and it has never once been read out loud over the body it was written for.

You have a word from God on file over this body, and it was written down before that card was ever printed. That is what it is written means, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an old sentence and makes it land on a person this morning, in this seat, at this hour.

And one more thing, because I mean it. If these four days have taken you somewhere darker than tired, if you have caught yourself thinking the world would tick along just fine without you in it, tell one living human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit up with you tonight. A page cannot do that job. You deserve a person in the room, and I am not too proud to send you to go and find one.