I Will Not Go To A Class For This

Somebody mentioned it again and you said no again.

There is one at the library. There is one at the church hall on Tuesdays. Your daughter has mentioned it twice, and each time you have said something short, and each time the subject has moved on.

And everybody has quietly filed your refusal under pride. Including, probably, you.

I do not think it is pride. I think it is something else and I think it deserves to be called by its right name.

Here is what a room like that actually is. Ten or twelve people. One person at the front going at whatever speed the room allows. And a man in the third row who has spent fifty years being the one who knew what he was doing, sitting there being the slowest in the room, in front of eleven strangers who will see it happen.

That is not learning. That is a public exhibition, and the subject of the exhibition is you.

And a man who declines that is not being proud. He is protecting something real, and he has good reason, and nobody has ever said so out loud to him.

A bruised reed shall he not break

There is a description of how God handles what is already damaged, and it is one of the gentlest sentences in the prophets.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth. (Isaiah 42:3, King James Version)

A bruised reed. Something that is not broken but is not sound either. Bent, weakened, still standing, and easy to finish off.

And the promise is that it will not be finished off.

You are a bruised reed that God will not break, and no damaged thing has ever once been discarded by the one who made it. Isaiah 42:3 says a bruised reed shall he not break, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for a man who has been guarding something and calling it stubbornness.

Now the second image, which is the one that fits you exactly. Smoking flax. A wick that is barely alight. Not burning, not out. The bit of a candle that could go either way.

And the promise is that it will not be put out. Not that it will be made to blaze. That it will not be quenched.

You have never once been in danger of being put out by God, and no barely lit thing has ever been quenched by the one who is holding it. The Holy Spirit is the one who guards a small flame instead of demanding a fire, and it is written that the flax is not quenched rather than being made to burn brighter.

And notice how this passage describes the way the servant works. A few verses earlier it says he shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street.

Quietly. Without a public setting. Without a room full of people watching.

You were never going to be taught in the street, and no work of God in that passage has ever once required an audience. The Spirit of God is the one who works without the voice being heard in the street, and Scripture describes the whole manner as quiet before it describes the reed.

What you are actually refusing

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not get anybody through a door.

Separate the two things, because they have been welded together and they are not the same.

The first thing is learning something, which has gone on continuously for a whole lifetime. A trade, a town, a family, three different sets of rules at work, and none of it in a classroom.

The second thing is being publicly slow in front of strangers. That is a completely different proposition and you have never had to do it.

You are refusing a setting and never once the learning, and no man has ever been able to tell those apart from the outside. The Spirit of God is the one who separates two things that have been welded together, and Isaiah 42:3 promises gentleness to what is already bent.

And here is the second half. There is a reason a room like that is hard for you specifically, and it is not weakness.

A man who has been the competent one for fifty years has a great deal invested in that, and it is not vanity. Being the one who knows what he is doing is how a man like that has been useful to people, and being useful is most of what he has understood a man to be for.

Sitting in the third row being the slowest is not embarrassing because of pride. It is hard because it is the opposite of the whole shape of your life.

That is a gap in what anybody has ever explained, and it is not a gap in you.

You have been protecting the shape of your own usefulness, and no man has ever once been proud for guarding the thing he understood himself to be for. The written word promises not to break the bent thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names a refusal accurately at last.

Beside me, not in front of me

Now the small thing, and it is not a class.

I am not going to talk you into a room. The room is genuinely wrong for this and I am not going to spend an afternoon pretending otherwise.

Ask one person to sit beside you for ten minutes, and say the two words, beside me.

You are able to ask for one person and ten minutes, and one small arrangement has never once been the same thing as an enrollment. Isaiah 42:3 promises gentleness to the bent and the barely lit, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man asks for something on his own terms.

The two words are the whole of it. Beside me.

Not in front of me, which is a class. Not instead of me, which is being rescued. Beside me, which is how every real thing in a working life gets learned, standing next to somebody with your own hands on the work. Nobody ever told him that either, and a gap in the teaching is not a gap in the man.

And ten minutes, not an afternoon. Ten minutes is small enough that nobody has to make an occasion of it, and small enough that you can stop.

You are asking for the arrangement every trade in this world has always used, and standing beside somebody has never once been a lesser thing than sitting in front of them. The Spirit of God is the one who works quietly and without the voice in the street, and it is written that the smoking flax is guarded rather than put out.