Good For Him, I Thought

He has the ticket in his hand, the little printed one with the number on it, and he has been on the same plastic chair long enough to have read the poster on the far wall twice.

Fifty-eight. Two retraining courses, both finished, both certificated, and both certificates in a plastic wallet at home in the drawer with the good scissors.

The work coach today is younger than his daughter. She is kind. That is the part he keeps having to sit with, because she is genuinely kind, and she brings up the same three suggestions on the screen that were on it in the spring, and she says them in the same bright way, and none of it is her fault.

Then the door goes and a lad of about twenty-two comes out grinning with his phone already at his ear, telling somebody he has got it, he starts Monday.

And here is what went through him. Not out loud. Nowhere near out loud.

Good for him, he thought. And the way he thought it was not good, and he knew that while it was happening, and it came up out of him as easy as breathing.

So he sits there afterwards holding a numbered ticket, more frightened of what he is turning into than of anything that is going to happen at the counter.

That is why I have come and sat down next to you. And I have not come to tell you off.

I am not going to correct what you said in your head

You have carried that around all afternoon waiting for somebody religious to tell you off about it, and I want to get out of that queue before we start. Scripture is not shocked by it and neither am I, and the Holy Spirit did not leave the room at the moment you thought it.

Let me say plainly what I am not going to do on this page. I am not going to call it sin and hand it back to you. I am not going to ask you to repent of it before I will minister to you. I am not going to give you a verse about a root of bitterness and leave you on a plastic chair feeling as though you have now failed at being a Christian on top of everything else.

You have been at this a long time. Two courses, both finished, hard ground under both of them, and a drawer at home with the proof in it. What has come up in you came up honestly, and it came up under a weight that most of the people with an opinion about it have never carried for a single week. The written word is full of men it happened to, and the Holy Spirit kept their words in the record without cleaning them up first.

And I will tell you what you are, since somebody in your week ought to. You are a man God is not embarrassed by. That is not my own kindness talking, it is what the written word does with men in exactly your position, and it put them there deliberately for you to find.

I will not refrain my mouth; I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.Job 7:11

Job said it and God did not flinch

That sentence is in the Bible. Not as a warning. Not with a footnote underneath saying do not try this. It is in there as a man's actual speech, kept word for word, bitterness and all.

And read how that book ends, because everybody knows the beginning of it and hardly anybody reads the last chapter properly. God turns up, and He does not tell Job off about the bitterness. The people He is angry with are the three friends who explained it all to him (Job 42:7). The men who told him there had to be a reason and the reason was probably him.

Hear that where you are sitting. You are safe to say it. The written word has the raw version preserved for anybody who needs to find it, and the correction aimed squarely at the men who tidied it up, and the Holy Spirit has kept that page available for a man on a plastic chair at fifty-eight.

He is not fragile. He has never once needed protecting from what a man actually thinks, and He is not learning anything new about you at the moment you finally say it. The only person in this who did not know what was in you was you.

What softening actually looks like

Softening is not you deciding to feel warmer about that lad and his start date. It is not a decision at all, which is the good news in this, because you have already tried deciding and it did not work. Scripture says God gives the new heart Himself and does the taking out of the old one Himself (Ezekiel 36:26), and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the work, not you at two in the afternoon in a waiting room.

So what does it look like from the inside. Mostly it looks like being able to say the thing out loud to God and finding that you are still on speaking terms with Him afterwards. That is the whole of the first move, and it is smaller than you think and it does more than you think.

You are not being held at arm's length until you have got nicer. You have access to Him right now, exactly as sour as you are, and it is not a concession granted to you this once: the written word says you stand in this grace and have your access into it (Romans 5:2), and the Holy Spirit is the one who brought you in.

And it will very likely not feel like softening while it is happening. It usually feels like being able to breathe out.