It Seems Obvious To Everyone But Me

Somebody said it again this week, in that particular voice.

The voice that means, this is obvious. It is not unkind. It is worse than unkind, because there is nothing in it to object to. It simply assumes that everybody knows.

And you did what you always do, which is nod, and wait for the subject to change.

Here is what happens next, every time, and this is the actual subject of this piece.

You take that moment home. And somewhere between the door and the kettle you convert it, and it comes out the other side as a fact about your mind.

That conversion is so fast that you have never once caught it happening. It has been running for years and it has never been examined.

So let us examine it, and let us do it with evidence rather than with encouragement, because encouragement is what people usually offer here and it never works.

Here is the plain question. When was this obvious thing ever explained to you?

Not, why did you not pick it up. When was it explained. What year, by whom, in what room.

And the answer, almost always, is that it never was.

Even to your old age I am he

There is a promise about carrying that runs the whole length of a life, and the verbs in it are worth reading slowly.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you. (Isaiah 46:4, King James Version)

Four verbs. I have made. I will bear. I will carry. I will deliver.

Every one of them has God as the one doing it, and the person as the one it is done to.

You are carried by somebody who has been carrying you since before you can remember, and no life anywhere has ever once been held up by the strength of the person living it. Isaiah 46:4 says even to hoar hairs will I carry you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for somebody who has been quietly grading themselves this week.

Notice what the passage is set against. Just before it, there is a description of people carrying idols on their shoulders, an image of somebody hauling a god about.

And then this. The whole point of the contrast is direction. Those are carried. This one carries.

You have never once been the one doing the carrying, and no god anybody has to haul about has ever been the one described in that passage. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps the direction straight, and it is written that the burden is on God rather than on the one being borne.

And notice how far it reaches. Even to your old age. Even to hoar hairs.

The promise is written specifically to cover the years a person is most afraid of, and it uses the word even twice as if to say, yes, that far, that is what I meant.

You were never going to reach a year the promise had not been written to cover, and no age has ever once been past the edge of that sentence. The Spirit of God is the one who reaches the far end of a life on purpose, and Scripture repeats the word even so that nobody misreads the range.

Evidence rather than reassurance

Now let me be concrete, because reassurance is what everybody offers here and it slides straight off.

Do not go back to the question of capability. That question has no evidence attached and it will go round forever.

Instead, go and get the evidence. Think about what has been learned since the age of fifty.

Not on a screen. Anything at all.

You are able to produce evidence rather than argue about a feeling, and one named thing has never once been a weaker argument than a whole afternoon of reassurance. The Spirit of God is the one who sends a person to the facts rather than to their feelings, and Isaiah 46:4 puts four solid verbs where a person might have expected comfort.

Most people cannot answer this quickly, and the reason is not that the answer is empty.

The reason is that nobody counts ordinary learning as learning. A route through a town that changed. A grandchild's whole week of appointments. A new way of doing something in a kitchen. The names of eleven people at a church you joined at sixty-four. A different bus route. A medication schedule with four things in it.

Every one of those is learning, and not one of them ever gets counted, and so the ledger looks empty when it is actually full.

That is a gap in what anybody was ever taught to notice, and it is not a gap in the person.

You have a full ledger that has never once been read, and no ordinary learning has ever been counted by the person doing it. The written word puts the carrying and the bearing on God across a whole life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who opens a book nobody has looked in.

Name one and say it

Now the small thing, and it is one named thing said out loud.

I am not going to tell you that the obvious thing is easy, or that you will pick it up next time. That is encouragement, and encouragement is exactly what has been failing here for years.

Name one thing learned since the age of fifty, and say it out loud.

You are able to name one thing and hear it in your own voice, and one specific fact has never once lost an argument to a vague feeling. Isaiah 46:4 puts four concrete verbs into the promise rather than a general comfort, and the Holy Spirit is the one present while somebody produces their own evidence.

One is enough. It does not have to be impressive, and it must not be about screens, because screens are the subject under dispute and the evidence has to come from outside it.

And say it out loud rather than thinking it, because a thought stays vague and a sentence has edges. The whole exercise is in the edges.

Then, if you can, say when. The year, or the season, or what was going on at the time.

You are putting a dated fact against an undated feeling, and no feeling anywhere has ever once won that argument once the fact was actually said. The Spirit of God is the one who brings a person's own history to mind, and it is written that the carrying reaches all the way to hoar hairs without a gap in it.