Nobody In The House To Tell

You said it out loud.

That is the part worth starting with. You said something to the machine, or about the machine, in the voice a person uses when there is somebody else in the room.

And then the room did what the room does now, which is nothing.

And that was the moment. Not the machine stopping. The two seconds afterward, when a sentence went out into a kitchen and came back with nothing on it.

Forty one years there was somebody to say it to. Not a repairman. Somebody who would have said what, or said oh for heaven's sake, or said nothing at all and just walked in from the other room with a cup in his hand and stood there looking at it with you. That is not help. Nobody is pretending it was help. It was company at the moment of a small disaster, and it turns out that company at the moment of a small disaster is most of what makes a small disaster small.

So we are going to deal with that and not with the machine, because the machine will take a phone call and the other thing has been going on since March.

You are a woman living alone and not a woman living unheard, and an empty house has never once meant there was nobody to tell.

Cast me not off in the time of old age

There is a prayer in the psalms that most people skip past, and it is one of the most honest sentences an older person ever prayed.

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. (Psalm 71:9, King James Version)

He is afraid of being set aside. That is the fear in that verse, stated plainly, with no dressing on it. Not afraid of dying. Afraid of becoming the person nobody comes to, the one who is moved gently to the edge of things while everybody stays kind about it.

You are permitted to name that fear out loud the way the psalm names it, and a prayer about being set aside has never once been a prayer God found embarrassing. Psalm 71:9 puts the fear into words without one syllable of apology, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a kitchen where a sentence came back with nothing on it.

And notice something about that verse that changes what it is.

It is addressed. It is spoken to somebody. The man is alone enough to be frightened of being alone, and the whole verse exists because he said it to God rather than thinking it in a room.

That is not a consolation. That is the actual mechanism of the psalm. The fear of not being heard is answered in the same instant by the act of speaking to someone who hears.

You are speaking into a house where you are already heard, and a kitchen with one person in it has never once been a room where a sentence goes nowhere. The written word is full of people saying things out loud to God with nobody else present, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in the room when it happens.

And forsake me not when my strength faileth.

He is honest about the strength. He is not claiming to be fine. The failing is admitted in the same breath as the asking, and God is not described as being put off by either half of it.

You are allowed to say out loud that some of it has got harder, and an admission about strength has never once cost anybody their standing with God. Psalm 71:9 says when my strength faileth as a plain report rather than a confession, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives a plain report in a quiet kitchen.

The two things that are actually broken

Something practical, and it is really about separating two jobs that have got stuck together.

There is a machine that needs a phone call. That is a small, finite, boring problem and it has a solution that can be started tomorrow morning between nine and ten.

And there is the second thing, which is that a small domestic event happened and there was nobody to tell. That one is real and it is bigger, and it does not get fixed by fixing the machine, which is why fixing the machine never quite settles it.

You have two different things in that kitchen tonight and only one of them is an appliance, and a silence that follows a sentence has never once been repaired by a repairman. The written word has a man naming his loneliness directly rather than tidying it into something practical, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps the two of them separate long enough for both to be handled.

So here is what to do with the second one, and it is smaller than it sounds and it is the whole of the assignment.

Ring somebody tonight and tell them about the machine.

Not to ask them for anything. Not to have them come and look at it. Tell them the way you would have said it to a person walking in from the next room with a cup in his hand. It stopped. It made a noise and then it stopped and there is a drum full of water in there.

You are able to hand one small ordinary fact to one person tonight, and telling somebody about a washing machine has never once been too small a reason to pick up a phone. Psalm 71:9 is a man saying an ordinary frightened thing out loud to somebody who hears, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a phone call into that same act.

And I know the objection, because it is the same objection every time.

The objection is that people are busy, and that this is not important enough to bother anybody with, and that ringing somebody to say a machine broke is the kind of thing that makes a person into the woman who rings about machines.

That objection has been running unchallenged for a while, and it deserves to be looked at rather than obeyed. The written word has a man saying the frightened thing out loud without dressing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a small call into that same act. You have never once been the woman who rings about machines, and one phone call about an ordinary fact has never once been a burden placed on anybody.