The Oath in the Elevator

The elevator in that wing was slow, and it stopped at every floor whether anybody had called it or not, and at three in the morning he had it entirely to himself.

He had been sent down for coffee. That is the ordinary thing about it that he has never got over: the most serious sentence of his adult life was said in a service elevator on an errand for a vending machine.

He was somewhere between the fourth floor and the third when he put his right hand up. He did not decide to. It went up the way a hand goes up in court, and he said, out loud, to God:

As You live, if she lives, I will never let a day close without opening the book. Never once. As You live.

She lived. She is downstairs right now watching something on the television with the volume too high.

He let the first day close about five weeks later. Not the first hard day. An easy one. He got in at eleven, he was tired, he thought about it on the stairs and he let it go, and he remembers thinking that one day is one day.

Nine years of days.

And here is what he cannot get past, and it is not the nine years. It is the form of words. He did not say I will try. He did not say I hope to. He raised his hand and swore by the life of God, which is the most serious thing a man can put behind a sentence, and he has spent nine years being a man who did that.

You may have said yours less formally. Most people do. But if you know exactly how you worded it, and the wording is the part that keeps coming back, then you know what this man carries.

Two words that are not the same word

I want to draw a distinction now, and it is the most useful thing I know on this subject.

There is an agreement, and there is an oath, and we use them interchangeably and they are not the same shape at all.

An agreement has two parties. Both bring something. Both are bound, and here is the crucial part: when one side defaults, the agreement is voidable. That is the whole logic of it. You did not deliver, so I am released.

An oath has one party. One person swears, and the swearing binds the one who swears, and the other party is the one who receives it. A default by the receiver does not release the swearer, because the receiver never swore anything. There is nothing on their side to fail.

Hold that, and now look at what God did with Abraham.

For when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he sware by himself, saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. For men verily swear by the greater: and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife.Hebrews 6:13-14, 16

You are held inside an oath God swore in the first person and cannot be released from by anything you did. Hebrews 6:13 says He sware by Himself because there was nobody greater, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has held that floor under you for nine years.

Whose hand went up first

Read what is happening there and notice that it is exactly the gesture in the elevator, except it is God making it.

He raised His hand. He swore by Himself, because there was nobody higher to swear by. And He did it, the writer says a verse later, so that we might have strong consolation, which is a phrase for people who need holding.

So there are two hands up in this story, and only one of them was ever holding the thing together.

You are held inside an oath that God swore in the first person and cannot be released from by anything you did or did not do. Hebrews 6 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that out of an argument about Abraham and lays it on a man who has been carrying a raised hand for nine years.

Your hand went up in an elevator. That was real, and God heard it, and I am not going to tell you it was nothing. But it was a hand raised inside a room that His oath had already built. A guest's promise does not hold up the house.

You have been standing on His oath the entire nine years you thought you were standing on your own. His word says it and does not soften it, and that is the plain sense of an oath for confirmation being an end of all strife, and the Spirit of God has been holding that floor under you every single night you closed without opening anything.

What restoration actually says

Now to the years, because you have been holding them as evidence and I want to show you what God calls them.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you.Joel 2:25

Notice He does not say He will forget the years. He names them. He says exactly what ate them. And then He does the thing that no accountant can do, which is to restore a period of time that has already been spent.

That is not sentiment and it is not a metaphor for feeling better. It is a promise of return on what was consumed, and it is spoken to people whose loss was their own doing, which is the part everybody skips.

You are holding nine years as an exhibit against yourself, and He is holding them as something to be given back. Joel 2:25 is where that is written, and His Spirit is the one who has kept those years in that category the whole time you kept them in the other one.

And no, I am not going to itemize them with you. Not one closed day. A list is a courtroom with the furniture rearranged, and there is no courtroom in this elevator.