The Woman Who Came With Me

Nineteen fifty something, a tent on the edge of a field, and a woman from three houses down who had a car and offered to take her.

She was seventeen. Her people did not go to that sort of thing and would have had opinions if they had known, and Verna picked her up at the end of the lane and did not tell anybody, which is a kindness of a very particular sort.

And on the third night she went up. In front of that whole town, because that town fitted into that tent. And she said, out loud, into a microphone that somebody held for her because she was shaking, what she was going to be from then on.

Verna drove her home and did not say anything much and squeezed her hand at the end of the lane.

She was that for about a year and a half, and then she married the man she married, and there is nothing to say about that beyond that it was a long marriage and a difficult one, and by twenty five she was not any of the things she had said in that tent.

Thirty five years.

Verna is ninety one and lives in the same house, three doors down, and they have spoken perhaps four hundred times in thirty five years, about weather and gardens and people who have died. And not once, not one single time, has either of them mentioned a tent.

And this woman, who is now seventy two, cannot go into the church at the top of that road, because most of the people in it were in that tent or are the children of people who were.

You may live somewhere that remembers. And what keeps you out may not be God at all, but a hundred people who were there when you were seventeen and who have never once brought it up.

The place where the shame happened

Now let me put something in front of you from a small prophet at the end of a hard book, and I want you to notice one phrase in it, because it is the phrase for a woman who cannot walk up her own road.

Behold, at that time I will undo all that afflict thee: and I will save her that halteth, and gather her that was driven out; and I will get them praise and fame in every land where they have been put to shame.Zephaniah 3:19

You are promised the praise in the very place where the shame happened, and the ground is not swapped out. Zephaniah 3:19 names her that halteth and her that was driven out, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept that road for thirty five years.

In every land where they have been put to shame

He does not say He will take them somewhere else. That is the obvious solution and it is the one everybody reaches for: move away, start again, go where nobody knows.

He says praise and fame in the very place where the shame happened. Same land. Same road. The location is not swapped out, it is turned over.

And notice who is being spoken about: her that halteth, and her that was driven out. Not people who were wronged in a straightforward way. The words are for the lame and the scattered, the ones who could not keep up and the ones who ended up outside.

You are named in a promise that turns over the exact ground where it happened. Zephaniah 3:19 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of the end of a hard book and stands it at the top of a road you have not walked up in thirty five years.

Now let me be plain about the town, because I come from one and I will not pretend.

They remember. Of course they remember. In a place that size a thing that happened in a tent is part of the furniture, and there are people up that road who could tell you what you were wearing.

But I want you to look at what they have actually done with it for thirty five years, because it is remarkable and you have never counted it. Not one of them has ever said a word to you. Four hundred conversations with Verna and not one mention. A whole town holding a memory and, so far as the record shows, treating it as none of their business.

That is not a town waiting to convict you. That may well be a town that decided a long time ago to let a girl be seventy two.

You have been serving a sentence that nobody in that town has ever handed down. Scripture puts the praise in the place of the shame rather than somewhere safer, and the Spirit of God has kept your standing settled while you walked the long way round.

What Verna did not say

And Verna, because she is the face.

She squeezed your hand at the end of a lane and drove home and has never mentioned it in thirty five years. You have read that silence one way for thirty five years, which is: she is being kind about a disappointment.

There is another reading and it is at least as likely. She is ninety one. She took a seventeen year old to a tent without telling her people and squeezed her hand at the end of a lane, and she has been three doors down ever since, and she has never once made it a subject.

That is not a woman managing a disappointment. That may be a woman who did what she came to do and has been perfectly content ever since.

You are settled with God this evening, and no silence in thirty five years was ever a verdict. The word puts it plainly, and that is the plain force of a promise that puts the praise in the place of the shame, and His Spirit is the one who did the settling.