The Shop Was Saved and I Could Not Sleep

Sami got the answer on a Thursday and the shop is open and he has slept properly about four times since.

He wants the good news said first because it is the true part. The arrangement went through. The rent is covered until the spring, the supplier is being paid on the new terms, and two people who would have lost their jobs did not lose their jobs and do not know how close it was.

He did it by asking. That is the whole story of the Thursday. He sat in a room and asked a man for something, and the man said yes, and it is a fair arrangement with no cruelty in it anywhere.

And Sami has not been right since.

Not about the money. The figures are fine and he has been through them enough times to know they are fine.

It is that he had to sit in that room. That is the thing. He had to sit in a chair in front of somebody and say, out loud, in complete sentences, that he could not manage. He had prepared it. He had written notes. He heard his own voice doing it and he has heard his own voice doing it every night since at about half past two.

His father never asked anybody for anything, ever, in seventy-one years, and said so with some pride, and Sami has never once been able to decide whether that was a virtue or a wound and now cannot stop thinking about it.

What got him was his own son, who is nine, and who was doing homework at the counter after closing, and who said, without looking up from it: Baba, do you know the answer to this one? And Sami said which one, and the boy said this one, and then said, still not looking up, I asked Mama already and she did not know either, so I am asking you.

I asked Mama already, so I am asking you.

Sami stood behind his own counter with a cloth in his hand and had to turn away toward the shelves, and he could not have explained it to any man in that street.

And the sentence that arrived, standing there, had nothing to do with the arrangement.

He thought: my son asked two people in one evening and did not think anything of it, and I have not slept properly since I asked one man once.

Let me say the word properly first

Before we go on I want to be plain about what wealth means on this site, because the word is slippery and I would rather be clear than clever with a man standing behind his own counter after closing.

Wealth here means a portion. Not a balance, not an arrangement, not rent covered until spring. A portion is the old table word for what is set down in front of somebody because they belong at that table, and Scripture takes that ordinary word and does something astonishing with it: God says of certain people that He Himself is their portion. That is the only sense the word carries here.

And let me be plain about something else before we go further. Nothing in this article suggests the loan was a lesser thing, or that a more spiritual man would have gone under quietly rather than ask. That would be a stupid and cruel thing to say to a man who kept two people in work. The arrangement was a real answer to a real problem and it worked, and I am glad of it and so is God.

What I want to do is narrower. I want to name what the asking took out of you, and I would rather the word of God named it, with the Holy Spirit doing the work, than that I guessed.

You are not too far along for this to be about you. The written word says otherwise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes otherwise true in a body.

Called by name, before anything was asked

Isaiah writes to a people who have been through the worst thing that ever happened to them, and he opens with a sentence about ownership that is not about property at all, and the Holy Spirit has been carrying it to men who had to ask ever since.

But now thus says the LORD, he who created you, O Jacob, he who formed you, O Israel: Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name, you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you.Isaiah 43:1-2

Read the verbs and read the order they come in.

Created. Formed. Redeemed. Called by name. Every single one of them is finished before the sentence about the waters arrives, which means the relationship is settled before the trouble is even mentioned.

And notice what is not there. There is no application. There is no room, no chair, no notes, no man across a desk deciding. The written word does not say come and explain your situation. It says I have called you by name, you are mine, and only then does it talk about what a person might be walking through, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that order land in a body.

That is the difference between the Thursday and this. On the Thursday you had to establish that you were worth an answer. In Isaiah forty-three the name came first.

You are not a weak man for the half past two. You are somebody who was raised by a man who never asked anybody for anything, and who then had to sit in a chair and ask, in complete sentences, and the written word does not scold anybody for what that costs. It puts the calling by name before the water, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between agreeing with a verse and being able to sleep past two.

And here is what is true of you tonight, before you know one thing about the spring. You are met where the money could not reach. His word says I have called you by name, you are mine, in the perfect tense, done, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a settled fact in a man rather than a passage he can recite.

What the asking took

Think about what got you at that counter. It wasn't the homework. You had no idea what the question even was.

It was: I asked Mama already, so I am asking you. It was a nine year old asking two people in one evening and thinking nothing whatsoever of it, in the same room where a grown man has been replaying one Thursday for weeks. You were starving to see asking look ordinary, and you still are, and the written word treats that hunger as reasonable rather than as pride, and it is the Holy Spirit who says so to a man and not merely about him.

That is the honest thing under the half past two. The loan solved the shop and it could not touch the other thing, and the other thing is not the money at all: it is what a particular kind of man believes about himself the first time he has to say out loud that he cannot manage. No arrangement on earth reaches that, and that is not a failure of the arrangement.

Here is what the word has already settled about you, so that His Spirit can settle it in you tonight. You were named before the waters and the naming is not under review. Jesus asked a Samaritan woman for a drink of water because He was thirsty, out loud, in public, which means the Son of God asked a stranger for something He could not get for Himself, and He was behind that counter before your son opened his book.