The Ceiling at Ten Past Six

There is a line of light across the ceiling from the gap where the curtain does not quite meet the wall, and at ten past six in September it is exactly over the light fitting, and Tom has watched it get there.

He is not asleep and he is not awake in any useful sense. He is lying very still, on his back, with both arms outside the covers, doing the one thing available to him, which is not starting the day. Because the day has not officially started yet. Nobody has spoken to him. He has not stood up. Nothing has been said out loud about last night by anybody including himself. And in this specific window, before his feet touch the floor, there is a version of reality in which it is not entirely real yet.

He knows that is not how anything works. He is thirty eight years old.

He also knows, precisely, what the first ninety seconds after he stands up are going to be like, and that is the thing he is lying still to avoid.

Last night happened. It has been a long stretch and it happened. And what is playing in the room, on repeat, without any effort from him, is the conclusion: that the long stretch has now been erased and did not count and never counted, and that he is exactly where he was, and that everything in between was a kind of pretending that has now been exposed.

The line of light moves off the light fitting and onto the wall.

Let me stop and speak to you directly, because if this is your ceiling this morning you are not here for a nice piece of writing.

I am not going to ask you how long it had been before last night. Nobody here is counting anything. I am not going to talk about starting over, because that is exactly the language that is currently being used against you, and it is not mine and it is not God's. And I am not going to tell you what last night proves, because it does not prove that, and I am not putting one gram more on you.

You are inside a thing God is already calling new, and you were never asked to clear the old one out first. Isaiah says behold, I do a new thing; now it shall spring forth, and He announces it in the present tense over a people still standing in the wreck of the old one; that is exactly what stands written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a live sentence in a bedroom at ten past six.

Behold, I do a new thing

Let me name what is actually pinning you to that mattress, because it is not tiredness and it is not shame exactly.

It is a piece of arithmetic. Something has told you that the stretch behind you has been deleted, and that you are back at zero, and that everything you built in between was fictional. And the reason that lands so hard is that it uses the same measurement you have been secretly using all along: a count. If a count is what made the stretch valuable, then a count is what can take it away, and last night takes it away.

So let me show you what God says to people standing in exactly that position.

Remember ye not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing; now it shall spring forth; shall ye not know it? I will even make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert.Isaiah 43:18-19

Two things about who He is saying this to. He is talking to a people in exile, in the middle of a consequence, not to a people who had just done well. And the new thing is announced while the old thing is still entirely in the room. He does not wait for a clean slate. He speaks over the mess and calls it now.

You have a new thing announced over you in the present tense, and you were never required to have tidied anything up first. That is written into Isaiah 43, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a word delivered to exiles and lays it across a ceiling at ten past six in September.

Then look at the geography. A way in the wilderness. Rivers in the desert. He does not say He will take them out of the wilderness and then start. He says He will make a road inside it. Which means the new thing does not begin when your circumstances improve. It begins where you are, in the terrain you actually woke up in, and the terrain is where the road gets built.

You are standing on ground God builds roads in, and you were never told to get somewhere better before the building starts. Scripture says a way in the wilderness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that mean something specific about the exact morning a man is currently lying inside.

And there is a question in the middle of it that most people read straight past. Shall ye not know it? God asks whether they will recognize it. That is a real question, and it is there because a new thing at the beginning is small, and it does not look like a rescue. It looks like a person eating something and drinking water and saying one sentence out loud. He is warning them in advance not to miss it because of the size.

You are able to recognize a small beginning as the actual thing, and you were never going to be handed a dramatic one to make it easier. The written word asks whether they will know it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man see a glass of water and a sentence as the road going in and not as nothing.

Now the plain and necessary thing, right here in the middle. If your body is rough this morning, see a doctor today and tell them the truth about the drinking. Do not make decisions about your body or about stopping on your own. That is not weak faith, it is care. And past that: the friend who already knows, the counselor, the helpline, the room with the folding chairs, all of it is God's kindness with a face on it, and reaching for it is one of the ways He has always got people onto their feet. Reaching is not failing.