One Orange Thread

The wind turns at about four and puts the whole lot of it back over the row of sheds, and somebody down by the water butts shouts something cheerful and unrepeatable about his washing.

Six of them at the allotments on a Saturday, burning off the year. Bindweed, bean canes with the string still knotted on, the sunflower stalks that went over in September and have been lying there ever since going soft. The old drum with the holes punched in it has done this every autumn for longer than any of them have had a plot.

He is the one who put the wet cuttings on. Not out of stupidity. Out of a perfectly reasonable wish to be finished before the light went, and there was a barrowful of it sitting there, and he tipped the lot in at once, and the drum went from a good clean roar to a fat gray column in under a minute. Somebody laughed. Somebody said we have all done that. The woman with the two plots by the gate went back to her leeks.

And he stands there with the fork in his hand watching it smother, and thinks, with a flatness that surprises him: that is exactly what I have done to the other thing.

Because there was a time when he could not get through a psalm without stopping. There was a time when the singing did something to his chest. He has not gone anywhere. He is still in the same seat on a Sunday and still says grace over the same table and still, most nights, prays. But somewhere over about four years he tipped a barrowful of wet on it, and he could give you the list, and he has given himself the list many times, usually at about half past two in the morning.

Maybe you could give me your list. And maybe you have been sitting under it for long enough that you have quietly agreed with the smoke about what it means.

Before anything else: it is still alight

I am going to say the true thing first, before we go anywhere near your list, because if I leave it to the end you will read the whole of this from underneath a verdict, and the verdict is wrong.

It is still burning. Right now, under the wet, under the gray, under four years and whatever is on the list. Not as a nice thought and not as encouragement. As a fact about what is in you.

You know how you know? Because of the flatness. Because it grieved you when the smoke went up. A dead fire does not miss being a fire, and a heart with no love left in it does not lie awake at half past two minding that it cannot feel anything. You are grieving the coldness, and grief over a cooled love is the love itself, still there, still yours, complaining about its own condition. That is not sentiment; the written word never once treats a smoking wick as a finished thing, and the Holy Spirit does not stand over the barely lit taking notes.

Here is what God says about Himself in this exact situation. He is describing His own servant, and He chooses this to say about Him.

a bruised reed he will not break, and a faintly burning wick he will not quenchIsaiah 42:3

Read what that verse assumes before you read what it promises. It assumes the wick is faint. It does not argue with the faintness, does not scold it, does not ask how it got that way. It simply tells you what God will not do with it, and what God will not do with it is put it out.

Think about who does put out a smoldering wick. Somebody tidying up. Somebody who has assessed it, decided there is not enough there to be worth the trouble, and pinched it off between finger and thumb to save the mess. That is the picture the verse is refusing, and the One refusing it is God.

You have never once been assessed by God as not worth relighting. That is written down where anybody can check it, and His Spirit is the one who makes an ancient sentence about a wick land on a specific person on a specific Saturday. You are not being tolerated here. You are being tended.

The list, and what to do with it

Now, your list. I am not going to ask you for it.

I will not build an inventory of what you did wrong, and I am not going to make sorrow the price of warmth. That is a transaction, and God has never once run one. If your love for Him had to be bought back by feeling bad enough about losing it, the whole of Scripture would read differently, and Peter would have been finished on a beach instead of fed breakfast on one.

What I will say about the list is this: some of it is real. You did put wet cuttings on. There is such a thing as damping a fire, and pretending otherwise would insult you. And some of the list is not yours at all. Some of it is tiredness, which is not sin. Some of it is a hurt somebody else did, which is not sin. Some of it is a body that has been running on empty, or a grief, or three years of getting up at five. Dry feeling is not distance from God and it is not disobedience, and anybody who has told you it is has read the wick verse without reading who is holding it.

You have not been put on probation, and no part of your standing with God is currently under review. The written word puts you in Christ and keeps you there, and the Holy Spirit is the deposit of that, not a monitor of your temperature.

And there is the other half, which I love. Notice that in that verse God is doing all the verbs. He is the one not breaking. He is the one not quenching. The wick does not have a job in the sentence. The most that is asked of a smoldering thing is that it goes on smoldering in the hand of the One who is holding it, and you are doing that already, today, by reading this at all.