It was one Sunday. That is what she keeps saying to herself, as though the smallness of it settled anything.
One Sunday in a church she has gone to for thirty one years, in the row she has sat in since her children were small, and something happened that she has no account of. It did not repeat. She has been back every week since and it has been perfectly ordinary every time, and if it had happened twice she might have raised it with somebody.
What it did instead was send her reading.
She could not have told you she was looking for anything. She started with a book, then a second one, then, without ever deciding to, she was reading about congregations three counties away, and by about the fifth week she had noticed what she was doing and had not stopped.
And the guilt is the part that is hard. Not guilt about God. Guilt about the people in her own row, who would be hurt if they knew, and who have done nothing at all except be exactly what they have always been.
If one Sunday sent you looking, sit down at this table. Nothing about your congregation is going to be criticized here, and neither is your reading.
Reading is what a person does with a question
Let us describe the five weeks accurately, because the word being used for them is wrong.
A woman who has been handed something without an explanation goes and looks for an explanation. That is not the first step of a departure, it is the ordinary behavior of a mind, and it is the same instinct that sends somebody to a dictionary or a doctor.
The guilt attached itself later, and it attached to the wrong object. It settled on the reading, when the reading was only ever the search for a word.
You are not doing your congregation an injury by wanting to understand something. Nothing about five weeks of reading has been a judgement on the people in your row. I am not saying that to let you off. The written word says the entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple (Psalm 119:130), which puts the seeking of understanding on the side of light rather than of disloyalty, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that hold at a kitchen table at seven in the morning.
Where the sound filled
Here is what steadied me, and it is not a comment on any church three counties away.
Read the second chapter of Acts for the geography rather than for the fire, because the geography is doing something people rarely notice.
And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.Acts 2:2
It filled all the house where they were sitting. Not a hall they had hired for the purpose. Not a place chosen for its suitability. The house they were already in, sitting down, in the room where they had been waiting for days because that is where they had been told to wait.
And it filled all of it. Not the front. Not the part nearest the stairs. All the house, including the corner with whoever was in it.
You were sat in a house He filled, and Scripture puts the filling in the room the people were already occupying. That is written into the sentence itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who lands that in a woman in the row she has had for thirty one years.
Nothing here is ruling on the reading
Something has to be said very plainly, because a page like this leans hard toward telling somebody to stop or to carry on.
This article does not know what those five weeks are for and has no instruction about week six. Keep reading or do not. Nobody who has met you for six minutes should be issuing a direction about a thirty one year membership, and none is being issued.
What is being said is one thing and it is about the Sunday rather than the reading.
You can be renewed in the room you are already in, and one unexplained Sunday in that row was God doing something rather than God signaling something. Scripture says the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth (John 3:8), which makes an event without an account entirely normal and not a message requiring decoding, and it is the Holy Spirit, and not a book from the library, who settles what it was.
And if these five weeks have cost more than anybody at this table knows, if sleep has gone, if the Sundays have started to frighten, please talk to somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if there is danger to anybody tonight. That is not a detour around God. It is one of the ways He keeps people.
So here is the turn, and it is not a ruling about your reading.
He did this to you here. You can be renewed in the room you are already in, and you do not have to go. The written word says it filled all the house where they were sitting (Acts 2:2), which puts the filling in the room already occupied rather than in a room anybody went off to find, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that live in a row a woman has had for thirty one years.
I cannot tell you what those five weeks were for, or what God does next in that building. Nobody honest can. What I can tell you is that the guilt landed on the wrong object, and that the people in your row have not been injured by a woman wanting a word for something.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud at the table, in your own voice. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the authority in these words is His rather than anybody's judgement. You speak under His will and not your own, and what God does next, and when, is His to decide, however He answers, and in His own way.
- Guilt that came with the reading, you are a feeling about a search and you are not a fault in what God did. Psalm 119 says the entrance of His words gives light and gives understanding to the simple, and the Holy Spirit put seeking on the side of light rather than of disloyalty. In the name of Jesus I take you off my kitchen table.
- Idea that wanting a word for it is a complaint about my own row, you are not what God says about me and you are not sitting here tomorrow. John 3 says the wind blows where it wills and a person cannot tell where it came from, which makes an event without an account ordinary and not a message to be decoded, and His Spirit settles what it was. I am holding my one Sunday without a conclusion attached.
- Father, the sound filled all the house where they were sitting, and Acts 2 puts the filling in the room they were already occupying. I thank You that Your Spirit filled all of it and not just the front. He did this to me here, and here is the row I am sitting in.
Acts 2:2
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
