The Washer in His Hand

He came in for one washer, thirty cents, rubber, half inch, and he knows the exact drawer without looking at the labels.

Saturday, a little before nine, the hardware store on the corner that has been there longer than he has. Sawdust and cut keys and the smell of paint that never quite leaves the back wall. Aisle six is the little wooden drawers, the ones that stick, the ones with a sample glued to the front of each. He slides out the third from the bottom, takes one washer, closes the drawer with his hip. Total transaction, eleven seconds.

At the counter, the man who has run this place for twenty years looks up and says, how you doing.

And he says, getting there.

And then he does not move.

Four minutes. Anybody watching the security screen would think he was reading the drawer labels. He is standing in aisle six holding one thirty cent washer, and the reason is that getting there is a sentence he has been saying for three years, and this morning, for no reason he could give you, it would not go down. Because he is not getting there. He is not getting anywhere. The thing he has been praying about since a spring three years back is precisely where it was, and nothing has been said about it in either direction. No turn. No worsening. No answer. Just this, and a faucet at home that drips, and a man at a counter being kind.

That is you, perhaps, in your own aisle, holding your own small thing you came in for. Somebody asked and you gave them the sentence you keep by the door. And now you are standing four minutes past when you should have moved, in the third year of the same prayer, and the honest question underneath is not why has God not answered. It is quieter and worse than that. It is: what am I still doing here.

Getting there

I am going to start by not doing something, and I want you to notice me not doing it.

I am not going to explain the three years to you.

I do not know why nothing has been decided. I am not going to tell you it is building something in you, because I was not told that and I will not put words in God's mouth to make you feel better for ninety seconds. I am not going to tell you there is a key you have not turned, a sin you have not remembered, a prayer you have not phrased correctly, a door still shut because of something you did. There is not. Anybody who hands you a reason for the silence has invented it, and an invented reason is worse than no reason, because now you are carrying the weight and a homework assignment.

So I have nothing to give you about the delay. What I have is what He actually said, which is not an explanation at all. It is a Person telling you where He is.

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.Hebrews 13:5

Read the middle of it. For he hath said. The writer is not making a claim of his own; he is quoting, reaching back to Deuteronomy and pulling a promise made to men in a wilderness with nothing decided and no map. That is where the sentence comes from. It was not issued to people whose situation had just resolved. It was issued to people standing still.

You are not being held at arm's length while everybody else gets an answer. Hebrews 13:5 puts those words in the mouth of God Himself rather than in the mouth of a preacher, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries them into an aisle on a Saturday morning where nothing at all has happened.

What He said, and what He did not say

Look hard at what that promise does not contain, because this is where a person in year three gets robbed.

It does not contain a date. It does not contain a result. It does not say the drip gets fixed, the phone rings, the report turns. Somebody will hand you this verse with a wink, as though it were a receipt for something coming. It is not that, and treating it as that is how a good word gets ruined.

What it contains is a location. He is here. Not on His way. Not watching from a distance and taking notes on how you are handling it. Here, in aisle six, at four minutes past when you should have moved, in the third year, with nothing settled.

You have a God who said He never leaves and never forsakes, and He said it about the stretch where nothing has been decided. That is not my encouragement laid over your morning. It is written, in Hebrews 13:5, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old promise land in a room that smells like cut lumber.

Now let me hold both halves of the honest thing, and I am doing it here rather than at the end because this is where it matters. God heals. He heals bodies, and Scripture says so plainly, and this site was built to say it out loud rather than mumble it. And I do not promise you a result. Not the timing, not the shape, not the fact of it. I say what He said and I leave the current to Him, and anybody who does more than that is selling something. And if year four looks like year three, that is not a verdict on your faith and never was. Nobody here failed to have enough faith. That sentence is not in the book, it is not true, and it does not get to stand in this aisle with you.

None of this argues with the people caring for your body. Keep every appointment. He is not competing with them and never has been.

Verdict I have been quietly handing myself has no right to stay. Hebrews 13:5 says what God said about my whereabouts, not what I have concluded about my standing, and His Spirit is the one holding the difference open.

And one more thing, and I will say it in plain daylight rather than tuck it away. If three years of nothing has taken you somewhere darker than tired, if you have caught yourself wondering whether it would matter if you were not here, tell one human being today and not tomorrow. In the United States, call or text 988. Anywhere else, your local crisis line, and one person who can sit with you tonight. A page cannot sit with you. You deserve somebody who can.