Nine Messages I Cannot Open

The phone is face down on the table between the salt and a bill that came Thursday, and Beto knows without looking that there are nine, because he saw the number before he turned it over.

Nine. Sunday morning, twenty past nine. Nine is not a normal Sunday.

He knows roughly who they are from. Two will be his sister, who will have sent one at eleven last night and one at eight this morning and the second one will be shorter. One will be Manny, who was there. One will be his mother, who does not text and therefore has, which is its own particular weight. He does not know about the rest and the not knowing has been going for forty minutes.

The kitchen is fine. There is a plate he should wash. The window is open because it is already warm and there are church bells somewhere down the hill and a woman on the balcony below is talking to somebody about a chicken.

He cannot pick up the phone.

It is not fear of what they say. Some of them will be angry and he can take angry. It is that every one of those nine messages is a person who now has a thought about him, and the thought is being held by them and he cannot get at it, and until he reads them the thought is whatever the worst version would be, and the worst version has had all night to grow.

Twenty five past nine. The bells stop.

Let me talk to you now, if this is your morning and your phone.

I am not going to ask how long it had been. Nobody is counting. I am not going to talk to you about starting over, because you are not at a beginning, you are a man in a kitchen in the middle of a life. And I am not going to tell you what last night makes you, because it does not make you that, and I am not going to put one more thing on the pile.

You are already being run toward, and you were being run toward while the phone was still face down. In the story Jesus told, the father saw him when he was yet a great way off and ran, which means the movement started before the son had said one word of the speech he had prepared; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a present fact in a kitchen at twenty five past nine.

He ran while he was yet a great way off

Let me name the weight before anything else, because it is a specific weight and it is not guilt.

Guilt is about what you did. This is about what you now are in other people's heads, which is a thing you cannot reach, cannot correct, and cannot put down. Nine people are holding a version of you this morning and you do not get a vote on any of them. That is the actual thing keeping your hand off that phone, and it is not cowardice, it is the most natural response a human being can have to being unable to act.

So let me take you into the middle of the most famous story Jesus ever told, at the exact moment the son is walking up the road.

And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.Luke 15:20

Notice the order of everything in that sentence, because Jesus is being deliberate. The son has a speech. He wrote it in the pig field and he has been practicing it the whole walk. And the father does not hear a syllable of it before he moves. Saw him. Had compassion. Ran. All of it happens on the father's side of the road while the son is still a great way off.

You are seen from a long way off, and you were seen before you had anything ready to say. That is what is written in Luke 15, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a parable Jesus told to a room of critics and lands it on a man who cannot open his phone.

And he ran. In that culture an older man did not run. He would have had to gather up his robe to do it, and every person in that village would have seen him do it, and the running itself was the thing that took the shame off the son in public before he ever got to the door. The father spent his own dignity to get there first.

You are covered by somebody who got there before the village did, and you were never left to walk that road under everybody's eyes alone. Scripture says he ran and fell on his neck, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real covering on a Sunday morning with bells going down the hill.

And then look at what happens to the speech. The son starts it. He gets out about a line and a half. And the father talks straight over him, to the servants, about a robe and a ring and shoes, and the speech never gets finished, and Jesus does not have the father correct him or accept the terms. The whole prepared explanation turns out to be unnecessary, not because it was untrue, but because it had been overtaken.

You have a welcome that has already overtaken your explanation, and you were never going to be received on the strength of getting the wording right. The written word never lets the son finish, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the pressure of the speech off a man before he picks up a phone.

Now the plain and necessary thing, and it belongs right here in the body of this. If your body is in a bad way this morning, go and see a doctor today, and tell them the truth about the drinking. Do not decide anything about your body on your own. That is not weak faith, it is sense. And past that: your sister, the friend who already knows, the counselor, the helpline, the room where people sit in a circle and say true things, all of it is God's kindness with a face on it. Reaching for it today is not a failure. It has always been one of the main ways He gets people home.