I Keep Waiting For Somebody To Take It Back

The folder lives on the shelf in the hall and you know exactly which page it is.

You do not read it. That is the thing you would want somebody to understand. You are not going through the clauses. You go to the page, and you look at the part with the names on it, and your name is there, and then you close the folder and put it back.

Four times since July.

The first one you could explain. It was the week after, and there was a question about a date, and you looked it up and that was reasonable.

The second one was not about anything.

And what you are actually doing, and you know this, is checking that it is still true. Because somewhere in you there is a thing that has not accepted it, and every few weeks that thing needs to see the names again.

And underneath that, quieter, is the shape of a letter. You have never pictured it in detail. You just know that it exists somewhere as a possibility: a letter arriving that says there has been an error, and that the whole thing is being unwound.

Where that letter came from

Let me say something about that letter, the one never fully pictured, because I suspect it has a history older than this house.

Something has been taken back before.

Not a house. It might have been a job that was offered and then withdrawn. It might have been a place in a family, or a country, or a word somebody gave that they did not keep. It might have been something in childhood that nobody ever explained to you properly.

Whatever it was, it taught a rule, and the rule is: a good thing that has arrived can still be recalled.

You have a rule in you from something older than this house, and a lesson learned once has never once been proof about what is happening now. The Holy Spirit is the one standing in a hallway while somebody opens a folder, and it is written in James 1 that every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

And notice what the checking is costing you, because it is not free.

Every visit to that shelf tells the thing in you that the question is still open. You go to check, which confirms that checking is necessary, which means the next visit is required, and the interval between visits does not lengthen the way it should.

Four months in, the folder is still on the shelf rather than in a drawer, which is a small physical fact about a hallway that says something quite large.

You have been keeping the question open by answering it, and four trips to a shelf has never once made anybody more certain of anything. James 1 says with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning, and the Spirit of God is the one who put the unchangeableness on the giver's side.

No variableness, neither shadow of turning

Here is the verse, and the second half is the one built for you.

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. (James 1:17, King James Version)

No variableness. Neither shadow of turning.

James is using the language of light and shadow deliberately, because the Father of lights is being contrasted with the sun and the moon, which move, and cast shadows that shift across a day, and change with the season.

And the point is that He does not do that. There is no angle from which He looks different. There is no season in which the gift is reviewed.

You have received something from a giver who does not turn, and no good gift from Him has ever once come with a season in which it gets looked at again. The Holy Spirit is the one who chose the image of light that never moves, and the written word says neither shadow of turning.

Now I want to be careful, because this site does not promise anybody anything about a house, and I am not doing it here.

You have been offered no guarantee about a building and a great deal about a giver, and those two have never once been the same promise. James 1 says every good gift cometh down from the Father of lights, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put the steadiness in Him rather than in the circumstances.

I am not saying nothing can ever go wrong with this property. Things go wrong with properties. What I am saying is that the thing being checked for is not a risk that exists, and the fear underneath it is about being recalled rather than about anything that could actually happen.

The paperwork is complete. That completion is not under review anywhere.

You are not under review, and a thing that was finished in July has never once been reopened by anybody in the months since. James 1 puts the absence of turning in the character of the giver rather than in the circumstances, and the Spirit of God is the one who is not variable.