Twenty-Six Minutes On Hold

The music has looped eleven times. She has counted. Counting it is the only thing keeping her from putting the phone through the window.

Third call this week. Same number.

And she knows exactly what happens when somebody picks up, because it has happened twice already, and it will happen again in whatever number of minutes this is going to be.

They will be perfectly nice. That is not the problem. The person who answers will be a human being doing a job at a desk and will most likely be kind about it.

And they will ask her to explain.

Her circumstances, from the beginning, again, out loud, to a stranger, with the details, in the right order, in a tone that does not sound like she is either exaggerating or complaining, because she has learned that both of those cost you.

She has told this story eleven times in two months. She could set it to music.

And here is what she has noticed, which is why she is reading this instead of the hold screen.

She has started bracing the same way with God.

Not doubting. She would find that easier. She has just begun approaching Him the way she approaches this phone call: with her explanation ready, in the right order, in the right tone, waiting to be assessed by somebody perfectly nice.

And you know that, because there is somewhere in your life where you have to justify yourself, and you have started doing it in prayer without noticing.

Nobody here is going to ask you to explain

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

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb in that 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. No appeal, no ask, nothing smaller instead, nothing to volunteer, nothing to sign, and no assessment. You are not going to be asked to set out your circumstances anywhere on this page, and nobody is going to weigh them.

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

Said to a nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had emptied and the families who worked there had gone home hungry. It is a sentence about people eating. It was never a switch, never a means test, and never once about what is or is not in your hands.

Now the door, because you have been standing outside it with your explanation ready.

God has never once put a price on the door He is inviting you through, and He has never asked anybody to make a case at it. Read what He calls out, and notice that He does the qualifying Himself so that nobody has to: 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). He names the person with nothing out loud, in the invitation, before they have to say a word about themselves. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line like that off a page and gets it into a hold queue.

And that is how the book closes. The last invitation in the Bible is let the one who desires take the water of life without price (Revelation 22:17). Last page. The only qualification named is wanting it, and nobody is asked to evidence that.

You are welcome exactly as you are this afternoon, and there is no assessment between you and the nearness of God. 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). Count the locks on that door: not your doing, a gift, not works, no boasting. Nothing in that sentence leaves room for a case to be heard. His Spirit is what makes it land as relief rather than as doctrine.

Now the thing that has quietly happened to you over eleven tellings.

God has not moved further off because your hands are empty, and He has never required you to make yourself understood before He would come near. It is written that while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly (Romans 5:6). Nobody in that sentence explains anything. Nobody is interviewed. The whole transaction is settled before the person concerned has said one word, and the Spirit is what makes that a door you can go through with your mouth shut.

And there is one more, and it is the shape of the whole thing.

He did not summon anybody to a counter. It is written that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor (2 Corinthians 8:9). He came down the queue. He came to where people were, and He arrived without a form.

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

Nothing on this page is going to suggest what you could do instead, or offer, or manage. Nobody here is going to tell you how well you are holding up. Your circumstances are not a lesson, they are not somebody else's illustration, and you are not being looked at from a distance. You are being spoken to, plainly, by name.

And nobody here is going to predict that any of it 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 while you are on hold.