It Happened For Somebody Not Asking

Marion heard about it in a car park and the first thing she felt was not gladness.

The gladness came. She wants that on the record and it is true and it arrived within about four seconds and it was genuine and she has been genuinely glad ever since.

But the first two seconds were something else, and she has never been able to describe them to anybody, and the closest she can get is that something in her went sideways.

The woman it happened to is not religious. She would not describe it the way Marion would. She was, by her own cheerful account, not asking anybody for anything, and it happened anyway, and she talks about it as a piece of extraordinary luck and is entirely happy about it.

Marion has been asking about something similar for six years.

Not identical. She wants to be careful about that too, because she has noticed in herself a tendency to make the two situations more alike than they are, and she suspects that is doing something to her.

Six years of asking, and nothing, and then a car park and a woman who was not asking at all.

She is fifty-eight. It was eleven months ago and she still thinks about the two seconds more than she thinks about the six years.

You may know that car park.

Maybe you also had two seconds you could not name. Maybe you were glad afterwards and meant it. And maybe the two seconds are the part you have never told anybody about.

The verse where He says who He is found by

There is a sentence in Isaiah where God describes His own pattern, and it is not the one anybody would design.

I am sought of them that asked not for me; I am found of them that sought me not: I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that was not called by my name.Isaiah 65:1

I am found of them that sought me not.

That is God's own description of how He operates, in the first person, and it is presented without embarrassment or explanation. He is found by people who were not looking.

Which is, in one sentence, exactly your car park.

And notice that the verse does not present this as an exception or an irregularity to be accounted for. It is offered as characteristic. Paul quotes it later and applies it to whole nations of people who had not been asking while people who had been were standing right there.

The pattern you ran into eleven months ago is not a glitch in the system. It is a thing God says about Himself.

And what happened in that car park is His own stated pattern rather than a misallocation. The written word has Him describe being found by those who did not seek, in the first person and without apology, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a woman who has been quietly treating it as an anomaly.

And you can expect Him without putting Him on terms. The word describes His freedom in His own voice, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than establishing an order of precedence.

The two seconds

Now the two seconds, which are the actual subject and which nobody has ever let you say out loud.

What went sideways in you was not wickedness. It was arithmetic.

Six years of asking, in a woman who has held the thing carefully and prayed properly and told almost nobody, and then a report of it arriving somewhere it had not been requested. Any human being with a functioning sense of proportion registers that, and the registering takes about two seconds, and then a decent person's gladness arrives and takes over, which is exactly what happened to you.

I am not going to tell you the two seconds were fine. You did not think they were fine and I am not going to talk you out of your own conscience.

I am going to tell you that four seconds is a very fast recovery, and that a woman who has been genuinely glad for eleven months has not been harboring anything, and that what you have actually been doing since is not repenting of envy. You dealt with the envy in four seconds. You have been prosecuting yourself for having a nervous system.

And you dealt with it and have been prosecuting yourself for the residue. The word says charity envieth not, and it describes a direction rather than the absence of a two second reflex, and the Spirit is the one who makes that distinction real in somebody who has been carrying an old verdict.

And nothing about you is under review for eleven months of gladness. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a woman who has never told anybody about the first two seconds.

The comparison you noticed yourself making

One more thing, and it is the one you raised yourself, which is a good sign.

You have noticed a tendency to make the two situations more alike than they are.

That is worth taking seriously, because it is the mechanism by which a car park becomes a case. Two situations that are broadly similar can be pressed into being the same situation, and once they are the same situation you have a comparison, and once you have a comparison you have a grievance with arithmetic behind it.

You caught that. Most people do not.

And the way out is not to prove the situations are different, which would be its own kind of managing. It is to stop running them as a pair at all, and to let hers be hers, and to let yours be a thing you are still asking about, which it is.

And her situation was never a ruling on yours. The word says shall not the Judge of all the earth do right, and it puts the assessing somewhere outside a woman in a car park, and the Spirit is the one who lets two things be two things.