Nobody Else Came

There is a chair beside her and her coat is on it, and that is the only reason it does not look empty.

Nine forty this morning. It is now nearly four.

Her sister is three hundred miles away and would come if she could and cannot. Her friend has the children and has texted four times, warmly, and each text is lovely and takes about eleven seconds to read. Somebody from work said let me know, which people say.

So the coat is on the chair, and she has been alone in a public room for six hours, which is a specific kind of alone, because it happens in front of people.

She has watched two other families arrive in that time. One had five of them and they took up a whole row and somebody had brought sandwiches. She was glad for them, genuinely, and she also had to look at the floor for a minute.

And at about two she thought the thing she has been trying not to think: if this is what happens when it is serious, what am I actually to anybody?

That is your chair. That is your two o'clock. And I want to sit down beside you, because there is a promise underneath this day that was made long before anybody failed to come.

The promise underneath the day

There is a sentence in Hebrews that is one of the strongest in the whole Bible, and it is strong because of how it is built.

For he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.Hebrews 13:5

In the original it stacks negatives in a way English cannot properly carry. It is not I will probably not. It is closer to I will not, not ever, under any circumstance, leave you or let you go.

And notice where it sits. The writer quotes it as something already said, in the past, settled: he hath said. It was not issued this morning in response to your day. It was on the table before you woke up, before the phone calls, before anybody could not come.

You have a promise that predates today. Not a comfort arranged after the fact. Something already spoken, already standing, when the coat went on that chair at twenty to ten. The written word puts it in the perfect tense on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a woman in a public room rather than leaving it as a line for the end of a service.

Now let me say something about the family with the sandwiches, because you have been quietly ashamed of that minute looking at the floor.

That was not envy in any ugly sense. That was a woman seeing something she needed and did not have, in a moment when she had no reserves to be gracious about it, and being gracious about it anyway for the rest of the afternoon.

You have not behaved badly today. The written word does not require a lonely person to feel fine about other people's company. The Holy Spirit was beside you in that minute and did not think one thing less of you.

And now the sentence you thought at two, because it deserves a proper answer rather than a reassurance.

What am I to anybody is a real question, and today has given you real evidence for a bleak answer. Your sister is three hundred miles away. Your friend has your children. Those are facts, and the facts are that they could not come, which is not the same as would not, though at four in the afternoon in a public room the difference gets very thin.

You are not the sum of who was available today. The written word has God saying He will not leave and will not forsake, and He said it in a form with no exceptions in it. The Holy Spirit has been in the chair beside your coat since twenty to ten.