Waiting For A Signal

He has been ready since about the spring of the first year.

Not resolved. Not right about everything, and he would say so. Ready, in the specific sense that if that man walked into this kitchen this afternoon he would stand up, and it would be all right, and whatever else needed doing could be done later.

Three years of ready.

What he has been waiting for is a signal.

Not an apology. He wants that clear, because people assume it is that and it is not. Just some sign that it would be welcome. A word passed along by somebody. A message at Christmas that says slightly more than the previous one. A cousin mentioning that he asked after the family.

Anything at all that says the door is not shut.

Nothing has come.

Here is what he worked out in the car in October, and it has not let him alone since.

That man is probably doing exactly this.

Sitting in a kitchen somewhere, ready, waiting for a signal, from a man who is waiting for a signal from him.

Two people, three years, both ready, both watching for a sign that neither of them will send because both of them are waiting for the other one to send it first.

He cannot prove that. It might be entirely wrong. And it would explain everything.

If you have been waiting for a signal, sit down and have a cup. The table is half laid and nobody is asking you to do anything about it.

Who was already watching the road

There is one line in the most famous story Christ ever told, and it is easy to read straight past, and it is the one that matters this afternoon.

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.Luke 15:20

When he was yet a great way off, his father saw him.

Think about what has to be true for that to happen.

Nobody sees somebody a great way off by accident. A person is seen at that distance because somebody was looking, and had been looking a long time, and had done it often enough that the shape registered before the face did. There had been no message. No signal. Nothing had been sent ahead. That son had given no indication of anything, and the father had been at that road for however long it took, watching, because that is what he was doing with his days.

You are dealing with a Father who was already watching before anybody sent anything. Luke 15:20 has the seeing happen while the son is still a great way off and gives no hint of any signal having been sent, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept that detail in the story rather than starting at the embrace, which means the watching in this situation was never the part that was left to you.

Nobody is being sent anywhere

Let us be plain about what this article will not do, because a man three years into a wait will read the next line looking for an instruction.

Nobody here is telling you to make the first move. Nobody is telling you to write, to ring, to pass a message through a cousin, or to do anything at all involving that man.

This page does not know your situation. There may be very good reasons why nothing should be sent, and if there are, they hold, and nothing here overrides them or judges them.

You are not being summoned to anything, and three years of not moving has never once been treated here as a failure. Proverbs 22:3 says a prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself, and it is written as commendation for correct judgment about a situation rather than as an accusation of cowardice, and it is the same Spirit who gives wisdom to anybody who asks for it, which means what you have judged about the last three years remains yours.

What being ready has actually been

Now the three years themselves, because nobody has ever said this to you and it is worth having.

Being ready for three years is work.

It would have been far easier to stop. Indifference is comfortable and it arrives on its own if you let it, and most people in a three year silence quietly stop being ready somewhere around month eight without ever deciding to.

You have kept a door open in your own chest for three years with no encouragement whatsoever, and nobody has thanked you for it because nobody knows.

You have been keeping something open at real cost, and heaven has that written down. 1 Corinthians 13:7 says charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things, and every one of those verbs describes staying rather than achieving, and it is the same Spirit who works that love in a person, which means three years of readiness is the verse being lived rather than three years of nothing happening.