I Stopped Starting The Sentence

There is a sentence that comes up in you and you have never once finished it.

It starts fine. The first four or five words are ordinary and they would sound like anybody's prayer if somebody overheard them.

And then, about where the actual request would go, the sentence runs into something and stops, because you cannot say the second half honestly and you will not say it dishonestly, and there is no third option that you have ever been able to find.

So for a while you started it and stopped. Started it and stopped.

And then, about two years ago, you stopped starting it.

That is a wound and I want to name it as one before we do anything else, because you have been treating it as a character defect and it is not.

Something happened to you that made the second half unsayable. I do not know the whole of it and you do not have to tell anybody here. But a person does not stop starting sentences for no reason, and whatever put that stop in you did not ask your permission and it is not evidence of anything about your character.

You are the one they call for everything on this coast. And there is a sentence in your own mouth that will not get past five words.

Out of the pit

Here is a man describing how he got out of somewhere, and the first thing to notice is how long he says it took.

I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings.Psalm 40:1-2

I waited patiently. The Hebrew doubles the verb. Waiting I waited. It is the way that language says a thing went on and on, and it is there to stop anybody reading this as a quick rescue.

And he inclined unto me. Leaned down. Which is what somebody does when the person they are listening to cannot project.

The picture is not a man calling clearly from a distance. It is somebody down in something, not making much noise, and God coming down to where the sound was rather than waiting for the sound to reach Him.

So here it is, said directly to you, up on that ledge with the fire going below.

You are heard by somebody who leans down. Not one day, not once you can finish the sentence, not when the second half becomes sayable. Right now, with five words in your mouth and nowhere to put them, you are the man in verse one, and the leaning is what the verse describes rather than the volume. That is not my comfort. That is what is written, and it is His Spirit who takes a written line and lands it on a real man on a real evening.

Now, here is the thing about half a sentence.

It has been filed as a failed prayer. Something that did not make it out and therefore did not count.

But look at what the psalm actually names as the thing God responded to. My cry. Not my petition, not my case, not my well formed request. A cry is a sound a person makes when the sentence has broken down, and it is the specific noun the psalm chose.

Half a sentence is not a failed prayer. Half a sentence is the noun in that verse.

And hear this, because it is settled rather than pending. You have been heard every time the sentence broke, and the breaking was where the hearing was aimed. The word says he inclined unto me, which is a description of God changing position to catch something faint, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real evening on a real coast.

Start it. It does not have to arrive anywhere. That was never the requirement.