The List At The Back Of The Room

There is a table at the back with a box on it and a pile of little cards and two pens on a string.

You have used those pens more than anybody in that building.

Eleven cards this year. You know it is eleven because you can name them: the woman from your row whose son moved away, the man who does the sound and never says much, the family who came twice and did not come back, the girl who cried in the car park and would not say why. You wrote them all out in your neat handwriting. You put the date on. You folded them once and dropped them in the box because that is what the box is for.

And every single time, standing right there with the pen still warm in your hand, some part of you noticed that you have a thing of your own.

And every single time you put the pen back on the string.

Tonight you did it again. You wrote a card for somebody who is going into hospital next week, and you believed every word of what you wrote, and then you stood there for about four seconds longer than you needed to.

And then you put the pen down and got your coat.

Listen. Before we go anywhere near why, I want to be clear about something.

I am not catching you out.

You have not been found out and there is nothing here to be embarrassed about. I am not going to describe this as a contradiction and I am not going to make you feel foolish for eleven cards. Eleven people were carried this year because you can write, and God did not roll His eyes once while you were doing it.

I saw the four seconds. That is all I am saying. I saw them and I thought they were worth stopping for.

The word with no gate in it

Here is the invitation, and I want you to look at how it is worded, because the wording is the whole thing.

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.Isaiah 55:1

Read the first four words again. Every one that thirsteth.

Not every one who has been useful. Not every one who has carried other people well this year. Not every one who is not currently in a mess. The only qualification named in the whole sentence is thirst, and thirst is not an achievement. It is a lack. It is the one thing you cannot manufacture and the one thing you cannot fake, and God built the entire invitation around it on purpose.

So let me turn and say it to you directly, because you have written it eleven times this year and never once read it.

You are in that verse. Not one day, not once things settle down, not when you have finished carrying everybody. Right now, as you read this, with your coat over your arm, you are one of every one that thirsteth, and the invitation was issued before you ever picked up a pen. I am not putting my own idea over you. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a written line down onto a real person standing at a table at the back of a room.

Now here is the part I actually want to say.

I do not think you believe your thing is unimportant. I think you believe it is not urgent enough to spend somebody on.

That is a very particular kind of quiet reasoning and it sounds like humility from the inside. It goes: they are in hospital, and I am only tired. Her son moved away, and I have only been carrying this for four years. There is a queue, and mine is not the emergency.

But look at what Isaiah says next, because he does not say come and take your turn. He says without money and without price. There is no scarcity in that sentence. There is no queue at those waters, and nobody in front of you is using up your portion. A God who priced the whole thing at nothing is not a God who is running short by the time He gets to you.

And hear this, because it is settled and not pending: you have as much standing at that box as every one of the eleven names you put in it. Not a lesser standing. Not staff access. The word says come, and the word says every one, and His Spirit is not checking service records at the door.

That is not encouragement. That is the wording.