The Sentence at the Door

Ilyas winds the awning in at twenty to seven, the way he does, one hand over the other on the pole, and the last of the light comes down the street and lies along the crates.

He carries in the lemons. He carries in the boxes of greens with the leaves gone soft at the ends. He turns the sign, and he stands in the doorway with his key already out of his pocket, and the bell over the door does its small noise when the door swings the last inch.

And the sentence is in his mouth.

Whole. Word for word. The same one he used to say for a long time, the one he stopped saying about two years ago, and he did not decide to say it now and he did not decide to stop saying it then. It simply left, the way a habit leaves, over a season of no answer, and there was never an evening when he stood somewhere and gave it up. It thinned out. Then it was gone. And he had not noticed the gap in a long while, in the way you do not notice a picture has been taken off a wall until you look for the hook.

Now it is here, on his tongue, ahead of him, before he has decided anything at all.

He stands in the doorway with his key in his hand, and he does not say it out loud, and he does not go in either. Somewhere down the street a shutter comes down. The bell over the door settles.

He is not sure he is allowed. That is the honest shape of it. Not sure whether a man who let a thing go quiet for two years can simply pick it up again on a Tuesday at twenty to seven like nothing happened, and not sure what it says about him that it left in the first place.

That is you, perhaps. In your own doorway, with your key out, holding a sentence you did not send for.

Two years of not asking

I want to deal with the silence first, and then leave it alone.

Nobody is going to call it unbelief here. It was not. A sentence that thins out over a season of no answer is what a human mouth does, and it is closer to a bruise than to a rebellion. You did not walk away. There was no evening when you stood in a room and renounced anything. It went quiet the way things go quiet, and then two years went by, and the two years are not a charge sheet.

And I am not going to ask you for a promise. Not that you will pray every day now, not that you are back, not that this is the beginning of a new season with a name. Nobody is signing you up for anything. If the sentence comes out tonight and then does not come again for a month, that is between you and God and it is not my business and it is not a failure.

What I want to show you is where God actually was during those two years, because I think you have assumed something about it that is not true.

And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.Isaiah 65:24

Before they call. Read it slowly, because the order in that sentence is the whole gift. The answering is not triggered by the calling. It runs ahead of it. God is not a man standing with folded arms waiting for the request to be resubmitted correctly after a lapse.

You are answered by a God whose answering does not wait on your asking to start again. Isaiah 65:24 puts the answer before the call in plain writing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an old line like that and lays it against a man standing in a doorway with his key out.

Before they call

There is a second half of the verse and it is just as good. While they are yet speaking, I will hear.

Not after. Not once the sentence is finished and tidy and has a proper ending on it. While it is still coming out, half formed, said badly, said at twenty to seven by a tired man with lemons still in his arms. He is already hearing. The hearing overlaps the speaking, which means there has never been a moment in your sentence when you were talking into an empty room waiting for a connection to open.

You have a hearing that begins before your sentence is finished, and it did not close down for two years. What is written in Isaiah 65:24 has God hearing while the speaking is still happening, and the Spirit of God has been in that shop every evening you wound the awning in without saying a word.

Which is why the sentence being in your mouth tonight is not the first move. It is a response to something already going on. You are not restarting a conversation that stopped. You are noticing one that did not.

And here is the thing I most want off your back. Nobody used up their asking. There is no allowance, no quota, no number of times you may bring the same subject before God is entitled to be tired of you. That idea did not come from Scripture and it certainly did not come from Jesus, who told a story about a woman who kept coming back and told it in order to praise her.

You were never docked for the quiet, and no ledger anywhere has your two years written against you. Isaiah 65:24 is not a promise made to consistent people, and the Holy Spirit did not go somewhere else while you were not talking.