The Years I Filed As A Forfeit

Four years.

Not a dramatic four years. That is the part nobody understands, and it is why she has never told the story properly to anybody.

There was no falling out. Nobody hurt her. There was no crisis of belief that she could describe if you asked her, and there was certainly no announcement.

She just stopped going, one Sunday, because she was tired, and then again the next one, and after about six weeks the not-going had a momentum of its own, and after about six months it had become a fact about her, and after four years it was simply the shape of her life.

She prayed, in those four years. That is the other thing she has never said out loud, because it sounds like an excuse. She prayed in the car and she prayed at three in the morning and she read her Bible in November of the second year for about a fortnight, badly, and then stopped again.

And then she came back. Which was its own small horror, walking through a door where people know you and are careful with you.

That was six years ago. Everybody has been kind. Nobody has raised it. She is on a rota now and she makes the coffee and she is entirely, visibly, part of it.

And she has never once let herself all the way back in, because somewhere in her there is a filing cabinet, and in it is a folder, and on the folder it says forfeit.

Now let me leave her on the path for a moment, and ask you.

What did you decide you gave up when you stopped going?

Paul used a legal word and he meant it legally

There is a sentence in Romans that most people skim because it sits in the middle of a difficult chapter about something else entirely.

For God's gifts and His call are irrevocable.Romans 11:29

Read those four words again and let them stay legal words, because that is what they are. You have not been put on reduced terms, and the Holy Spirit did not quietly reassign anything in year two while you were reading badly in November.

It is a legal term. Irrevocable. It means a thing that cannot be called back, not because the giver is too sentimental to take it back, but because taking it back is not among the powers the giver has reserved.

Paul is arguing about something enormous when he says it, and he says it as a settled principle that ends the argument rather than opens it. God does not un-give.

Now, sit with what that does to a filing cabinet.

The folder marked forfeit is built on an assumption you have never examined, which is that something was withdrawn while you were not looking. That in those four years, quietly and without anybody telling you, a set of things you might have had were reallocated, and you came back to a smaller portion, and everybody has been too kind to mention it.

That is not a doctrine you were taught. Nobody preached it to you. It grew in the dark the way things do in a cabinet, and it has been running your life for six years from inside a folder.

And Scripture says the opposite of it in four words.

Hear where you stand tonight, because it is entirely different from where you have been standing. You are not a returned member on reduced terms. Romans 11 says the call is irrevocable, and the Holy Spirit poured out on all people did not reallocate your portion in year two while you were reading badly in November.

And I want to say something about those four years that you may never have let anybody say.

He was there.

Not in a way that let you off. Not in a way that means the four years did not matter, because they did, and you know they did, and I am not going to tidy that away. But you prayed in the car. You prayed at three in the morning. That was not a woman shouting into an empty house. Scripture says the Spirit is poured out on all people, and He does not attend only where the attendance is taken.

The fire this house is named for fell in a room in Los Angeles in 1906 that was full of people with gaps in their history. That is who was there. Nobody in that stable had an unbroken record and the Spirit fell on the whole room.

He has never checked a register at the door.