The Letter Nobody Warned Us About

It came on a Tuesday with a window in it and you nearly did not open it, because it looked like the kind of thing that is nothing.

And it was a renewal.

Not a bill you had forgotten. A renewal of something you did not know you had, at an amount you had not planned for, due on a date that is close enough that you did the sum standing up in the hallway with your coat half off.

And then you did a second thing, which is the reason I am writing this.

You went and looked for the file. The one where all the house papers are. And you sat on the floor in front of it and went through everything, one sheet at a time, looking for the place where this had been explained to you.

You were not looking for the policy. You were looking for evidence that you had not missed something.

You did not find it, because it was not there, and you sat on that floor for a while with a folder open on your knees.

What the search on that floor was for

Let me say what the search was actually about, because it was not about the policy and you knew that within about four minutes.

It was a check on whether the woman holding that folder is the kind of person who misses things.

That is the real question, and it has been the real question since you moved in, and every unexpected piece of paper reopens it. The letter is a cost. The search on the floor is an inquiry into your own competence, and it is the second one that ruins an evening.

You have been holding an inquiry into yourself on a hallway floor, and an envelope you were never told about has never once been evidence in it. The Holy Spirit is the one sitting on the floor with somebody going through a folder, and it is written in Isaiah 42 that God says I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not.

And the finding, when it comes, is always the same. It was not in there. Nobody told you. There is no sheet in that folder that covers it, because nobody ever writes that sheet.

Which should be a relief and never is, because by then the question has moved on from this letter to the next one.

You have been asking whether you are the kind of person who misses things, and one letter with a window in it has never once been qualified to answer that. Isaiah 42 has God leading people by a way they did not know, which assumes plainly that they did not know it, and the Spirit of God is the one who set it up that way.

By a way that they knew not

Here is the verse, and it is one of the kindest sentences in the prophets.

And I will bring the blind by a way that they knew not; I will lead them in paths that they have not known: I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight. These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them. (Isaiah 42:16, King James Version)

By a way that they knew not.

Sit on that for a second, because the whole assumption of the verse is a person who does not know the route.

It is not written to people who studied the map and forgot it. It is written to people who never had one, and the not knowing is not treated as a failure anywhere in the sentence. It is the starting condition, stated plainly, and the leading is built around it.

You are the person that verse is describing rather than the one it is correcting, and not knowing a route has never once been the same as having lost one. The Holy Spirit is the one who wrote the not knowing into the premise, and the written word says a way that they knew not and builds the leading around that.

And notice the last clause, which is the one that does the work for a woman on a hallway floor.

These things will I do unto them, and not forsake them.

Not: these things will I do if they get better at it. The promise is attached to nothing the blind person does. The leading and the not forsaking are both on His side of the sentence, and there is no clause about the reader improving.

You have been offered leading that does not depend on you knowing the way, and a route you have never walked before has never once put you outside that promise. Isaiah 42 puts the whole thing on God's side and adds no condition, and the Spirit of God is the one who left it unconditioned.