The Reply You Are Bracing For

The radiators knock on at the far end of the hall and forty people stop talking without being asked. An upright piano with one bad castor. A stack of blue plastic chairs shoved up against the fire door. And that smell every school hall in the country has once the children have gone, floor polish and rain drying on coats.

Fourth row back, on the end. She has stood on that same square of parquet for nine years. Hers is the folder with the name written on a strip of masking tape down the spine, because she was the one who labeled everybody's, back when she knew every child in the front row by name and could tell you which of them was going to be able to really sing.

The pianist counts them in. Forty voices go up into the roof.

Hers does not.

She holds the folder shut against her chest with both arms crossed over it. She does not even mouth the words. And nobody in that hall says a thing, because they have quietly decided among themselves that she is resting her voice. Nine months of resting her voice. She comes every Tuesday. She stands in her place. She goes home.

It is on the walk down to the bus stop afterwards, in the dark, with the hall lights going off behind her one bank at a time, that she starts the sentence again. She has been building it since the spring. She has the first part word perfect and the first part is true, and she has never once got past it. Because somewhere past it there is a reply. She has run every version of that reply she can think of, and there is not one of them she believes she could stand up under.

That is you, holding the folder shut.

There may be no choir in yours and no masking tape. But you have a sentence you've been putting together for God, you know exactly how it starts, and you've never said it out loud to Him. If somebody asked you why, you would probably tell them you're not ready. Listen to me. You're ready, and you've been ready for months. What you are is braced. You're not frightened He would turn you away. You're frightened of what comes back.

So let me take you to the place in Scripture where somebody finally gets the words out, and let me show you what came back.

Nobody in that story ever answers the speech

You know the story, or you know enough of it. A son goes, spends everything he has, comes to himself in a field a long way from home and starts back. On the road he composes, the way you've been composing, and he arrives with it ready.

Then this.

And the son said unto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.Luke 15:21

Now watch what the father does with it, because this is the part nobody ever slows down for.

But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet.Luke 15:22

Read who he is speaking to.

The boy is standing right there in front of him. And the father turns his head away from his son and starts talking to the household. Go through the rest of that account line by line and look for the place where he answers the boy. It is not there. He never tells him it is all right. He never says the thing you've been waiting your whole life to be told. He does not respond to the speech at all. He gives instructions about clothes.

And then he says the one sentence in the whole story that is his assessment of his son, and he does not say that to him either. He says it over the boy's head, to a house filling up with people.

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found. And they began to be merry.Luke 15:24

That is exactly where a verdict should have gone. Look at what is standing in its place instead.

Now let me say back to you what I think has been happening on your walk to the bus stop, because I do not believe you're afraid of being refused. Refusal has a shape and you could have carried it. What you cannot get past is the reply, the imagined moment where the room goes quiet and He tells you what He makes of you. That is why the sentence is never finished. An unfinished sentence never has to be answered. You've been guarding yourself with a full stop you will not put down, and it has cost you nine months of standing in your own place with your mouth shut.

Beloved, there is no reply coming. Not because He has gone cold and not because He is not listening. Because a reply belongs to a hearing, and there is no hearing being held. What God has to say about you was already said out loud over a whole household while the boy was still standing there with his speech in his hands, and it was not a judgement. It was a gladness. This one of mine was dead and is alive again. Put the music on.

And this is not a warm story from long ago that we admire from a distance. That is His manner. It is what He is like, He has not amended it since, and it is happening today in kitchens and stairwells and school car parks wherever somebody finally opens their mouth. It is happening somewhere while you are reading this.

And it is for you personally. Not for the version of you who gets there eventually with the whole thing polished. For you, tonight, nine months in, with the part you've never said out loud to anybody. And you do not have to say it to anybody. Not to a leader, not to a group, not across a kitchen table to somebody who would then know it about you forever. This is between you and God, it is enough there, and it always has been.

You have nothing left to deliver at the door. Scripture interrupts the speech with a robe, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can put a rehearsed sentence down.