The First Bus

The first bus is at ten to five and it is never full and everybody on it knows everybody else by sight and nobody speaks.

He has been getting it six days a week for two years and one month.

There is a woman who always sits at the front on the left and does a crossword. There is a lad who sleeps with his head against the window and wakes up at the right stop every single time without an alarm, which he finds genuinely impressive. There is a man in a green coat who nods at him and has never once said anything.

He likes them. He would not say that out loud to any of them.

The work is real work and he is not too proud for it and he does it well. It does not cover the week. It covers most of the week. And most of the week is a phrase that sounds manageable right up until you have lived inside it for two years and one month.

And here is the thing he was thinking about this morning, at the stop, in the dark, with his hands in his sleeves.

He cannot think of one thing he owns that would count.

Not for anybody. Just in general. If you said to him, bring something, he would stand there and go through the flat in his head, room by room, and come up with nothing, and the going through it in his head is the part that has started to bother him, because he has noticed he does it a lot.

So he has stopped bringing anything to God. Not from rebellion. From an inability to think of the item.

And you know that exactly, because you have gone through your own house in your head looking for the thing that would count.

Nothing has to be brought

Let us settle what governs this whole page. It is not a technique, and there is nothing on it for you to find.

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb in the famous sentence and it lands on Him. He is the one under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. It is written, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and it is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who takes the sentence back off the people who borrowed it.

And this is the promise this page keeps to the very last line, and this whole site keeps on every page. There is no appeal here. Nothing is being asked of you: not a thing, not a token, not something smaller instead, not your hours in place of it. Nothing. If you came in going through the flat in your head, you can stop. The list is not needed.

Now the verse in its own room.

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10

That was said to a whole nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had gone empty and the families who worked there had gone home hungry. It is a sentence about people eating. It was never a switch on a wall, it was never a door charge, and it has never had anything to do with what is or is not in your flat.

Now the door.

God has never once put a price on the door He is inviting you through, and He is not standing behind it waiting to see what you brought. Hear what He actually calls out, because He calls it the way a man calls across a market: come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters, and he who has no money, come, buy and eat, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price (Isaiah 55:1). Read who that sentence is aimed at. Not the ones with something. It names the ones with nothing, out loud, before it names the goods. It is the Holy Spirit, not this paragraph, who takes a line like that off a page and puts it at a bus stop at ten to five.

And it is how the whole book ends. The last invitation in the Bible is let the one who desires take the water of life without price (Revelation 22:17). Last page. No charge. The only qualification named is wanting it.

You are welcome exactly as you are this morning, and there is no version of you that would be more welcome, including the version with something to bring. It is written that by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (Ephesians 2:8). Look how many times that one sentence bolts the door back to payment: not your doing, a gift, not works, no boasting. The Spirit is what makes that read as relief rather than as doctrine.

Now the thing that has quietly happened over two years and one month.

God has not moved further off because your hands are empty, and He never once needed them full. It is written that while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6). Weak, at the right time, for the ungodly: three phrases that between them close off every entry condition, including the private ones a man invents for himself in the dark at a bus stop. The Spirit is the one who makes that a door you can walk through this morning rather than a fact you already accept.

And there is one more thing, and it belongs to a man who goes through his flat in his head.

Jesus said, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Not bring. Come. The only qualification in that sentence is being tired, and six days a week at ten to five is tired.

Now the guardrail, and it matters more on this page than anywhere else on this site.

Nothing here is going to suggest what you could bring instead. There is no smaller item, no hours you could offer, nothing to volunteer, and nobody here is going to tell you how impressive it is that you keep going. Your situation is not a lesson and it is not an example for somebody else. You are not being looked at. You are being spoken to. It is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who carries a sentence like that out of its own century and sets it down where you are standing.

And nobody here is going to predict that anything changes, because nobody writing to you has been given the right to say that. What is written is what is being said: God is close, there is no entry price, and He is not rationing His nearness at ten to five.