The Question I Have Had Since Fifteen

You were fifteen and sitting in the back row of a youth thing and something in the talk did not add up.

You did not say anything. You are not the sort. You went home and you thought about it for about a week, and then you put it somewhere, and you got on with things.

That was thirty years ago.

Since then: a marriage, three children, twenty two years on the same rota, a stretch of eldership you did not enjoy, two church moves, one funeral you took because there was nobody else. You are not a person on the edge of anything. You are load bearing in that building and everybody knows it.

And the question is still there.

Not gnawing. It does not keep you awake. It comes up perhaps four times a year, usually while you are driving, and each time it arrives it is in exactly the same words it was in when you were fifteen, which you find slightly eerie.

And every time it comes, something else comes with it, and that is the part worth talking about.

What comes with it is the thought that a man who has been in this thirty years should not still have this.

Before we go on, hear me.

I am not correcting you.

There is nothing wrong with a question that has lasted thirty years. It has lasted because it is a real question and you are an honest man, and I am not going to tell you it is a sign of anything.

I am saying I know it is still in the same words. That is all.

In no wise cast out

Here is a sentence of Jesus that is built out of double negatives on purpose.

All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.John 6:37

In no wise.

That is a strong construction. It is not merely I will not cast him out. It is I will not, under any circumstance, on any ground, in any manner whatsoever, cast him out.

Jesus is not saying the ones who come with everything resolved. He is not saying the ones who arrive without questions. He says him that cometh, which is a verb about turning up rather than a description of the condition of the person who turned up.

And then He piles the negatives up to close the door on every exception anybody might try to insert.

So let me turn and say it straight to you, in that coffee shop with the sun coming through.

You are not being cast out, in any manner whatsoever. Not one day, not once the question resolves, not when thirty years finally produces an answer. Right now, sitting with a cup going cold in front of you, you are one who has come, and the coming is the whole condition named. That is not my comfort. That is what is written, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a written line down onto a real man on a real afternoon.

Now the plain thing, and I am not attaching a clause to it.

The question is not why.

Not why anything. Not why the eldership went the way it went. Not why the thing wanted for a long time is still where it is.

I am not going to say something measured about unresolved questions being a hindrance, because that sentence would give you a new thing to carry, and this one has been carried alone long enough.

Thirty years with the same question is not a man on the outside of something. It is a man who noticed something at fifteen and has been too honest to pretend he stopped noticing.

And take this in, because it is already decided rather than pending. You have never once been on the wrong side of that door, and the door was closed against exclusion rather than against you. The word says in no wise, which is a phrase built to exclude exceptions, and it is His Spirit who carries a written line into a real afternoon in a real town.

The question can stay. It is thirty years old and it is welcome to stay another thirty. It has never once been standing between you and anything.