Fifty Years And It Still Does This

Fifty years and it still stops you.

You came round the corner of the shed this morning and there was a tray with the first of them up, and you stopped walking. Actually stopped, with a mug in your hand, for what was probably half a minute.

And you have done this perhaps four hundred times. You know exactly what a tray of seedlings looks like. There is nothing left to be surprised by.

And it still does it.

You are not still waiting to grow out of this, and fifty years of the same response has never once meant somebody failed to get used to it.

Let me name the assumption, because I think it has been sitting underneath this for decades and has never been examined.

Somewhere early on you assumed it would wear off.

Not consciously. But there was a sense that this was a beginner's response, the way a young man is impressed by things, and that experience would eventually turn it into competence. That one day you would look at a tray coming up and simply think, good, and get on.

And it has not happened, and you are seventy odd, and at some point that stopped looking like a delay and started looking like a fact.

They are new every morning

There is a line in Lamentations, in the middle of the bleakest book in the Bible, that describes something that does not wear out.

It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22 and 23, King James Version)

They are new every morning.

Now, notice what that is claiming. Not that they are sufficient, or that they are repeated, or that they come round again. New. Each morning, as though for the first time.

Something that is new every morning is something that does not accumulate into familiarity.

You are looking at a description of something that never once becomes routine, and a mercy that arrives new has never been the same as a mercy arriving again. Lamentations 3:23 says new rather than repeated, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who stopped walking at a tray this morning for the four hundredth time.

And the setting matters, as it always does with this book. This is a man who has watched a city destroyed. He is not in a good year. Chapter three has him saying that his strength and his hope are perished.

And in the middle of that he says this, which means it is not optimism. It is something he has observed that keeps being true regardless of him.

You are dealing with something that holds independently of anybody's condition, and a thing that persists through a man's worst year has never once been a mood. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a thing new regardless of the state of the person receiving it, and the written word puts that sentence inside a book about ruins.

And then great is thy faithfulness, which is the response rather than the claim.

He is not saying God is reliable in the sense of predictable. He is saying that the not-wearing-out is itself the faithfulness. The freshness is the evidence.

You are holding evidence rather than a leftover feeling, and a response that has not worn out in fifty years has never once been a failure to mature. The Spirit of God is the one whose compassions are new each morning, and the word calls that persistence faithfulness rather than repetition.

The assumption was wrong

Let me deal with the assumption directly, because I think it can simply be retired.

You expected familiarity to flatten it. And that does happen with a great many things, and it is a real feature of experience, and it is why an experienced man does most jobs without the emotional weather a young one brings.

But it has not happened with this one, in fifty years of daily opportunity to happen, which is about as thorough a test as anything gets.

At some point a thing that has not worn off in five decades has to be accepted as a permanent feature rather than a delayed one.

You are looking at a settled fact rather than a process that has not finished, and fifty years of evidence has never once been an incomplete sample. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man stop waiting for himself to change, and Lamentations 3:23 describes something new every morning without any suggestion it will eventually settle down.

And here is the thing that I think you may not have considered, because men your age rarely put it this way.

The competence and the stopping are not in competition.

You have fifty years of knowing what you are doing. That is real and nobody can take it and it is why your trays come up. And you also stop walking when they do. Both things are true of the same man on the same morning, and neither has ever interfered with the other.

You are able to be entirely competent and still be stopped by something, and expertise has never once required a man to be unmoved by what he is expert in. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps both alive in one person, and the written word puts the new mercies and a lifetime of them in the same sentence.

Stand there as long as it takes

So here is the assignment, and it is a permission rather than a task.

Stand there as long as it takes, the way you did the first time.

Next time you come round the shed and it stops you, do not shorten it. Do not get on. Stand there for the full length of whatever it is.

You are able to give a thing its full length, and half a minute at a seed tray has never once been time that a man had to account for at his age. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one on that path while an old man stands still with a mug.

Here is what you have probably been doing for about thirty of the fifty years, and I suspect you will recognize it.

Stopping, and then cutting it short. Because there is work, and because a man who stands looking at a tray for a minute is doing something that looks like nothing, and somewhere there is a sense that at your level of experience this ought to take less time.

It ought not to take less time. There is no ought in it anywhere.

You are permitted the whole of it rather than a shortened version, and a response cut short has never once been a response that a man got the good of. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the part after a man would usually have moved on, and the word describes something that arrives new rather than something a person should be getting used to.

And if somebody comes round the corner and finds you standing there, let them.