The Girl Who Keeps Sitting Next To Her

The first three weeks she assumed it was where the space was.

That is a reasonable assumption in a small building where people have their places and a new person sits in whatever gap is going.

By about week six she had noticed that there were other gaps.

By week eleven, which is where they are now, there is no version of it that is accidental, because last week the girl came in late and stood at the back for a bit and then came all the way down the side and sat in the one seat, and the woman sitting on the other side had to move her bag.

She is nineteen or thereabouts. She does not say very much. She says hello properly, which not everybody does, and twice she has asked something short at the end, and both times the older woman answered it in about six words and then said something about the weather.

That is the whole of it. Eleven weeks and about four minutes of actual conversation.

And what the older woman has decided, without ever putting it into words until this moment, is that the girl must be shy and is sitting there because it is quiet at that end.

She has never once considered the other explanation, and if you asked her why she would tell you, quite comfortably, that she has nothing a girl of nineteen would want.

She is sixty-eight. She has been reading the same Bible for thirty-odd years. She has buried a husband and raised three and lost one job she loved and got through a stretch in her fifties she does not talk about, and she prays in a plain way that has never once been described by anybody as anything, including herself.

Nothing on that list looks to her like a thing a young woman would come and sit next to.

And you have somebody who keeps turning up near you. In a seat, or at the end of a shift, or by the kettle. And you have explained it to yourself as an accident of the room.

What I have, I give you

There is a scene at a gate in Acts where a man asks two men for money and gets an answer nobody was expecting.

Peter has nothing. He says so plainly, in front of a crowd, and there is no embarrassment in it and no apology attached.

But Peter said, "I have no silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk!"Acts 3:6

What I do have I give to you.

That is the whole formula and it is worth reading it as a plain sentence rather than a famous one. He does an inventory, out loud. He names what is not there. Then he hands over what is.

He does not send the man to somebody better resourced.

You have something in your hands and the sentence only requires you to name it and pass it over. It is written, what I do have I give to you (Acts 3:6), and it is the Holy Spirit who does what happens next, which is the part nobody at that gate could have arranged, including Peter.

Now your inventory, because you gave it and you gave it wrongly.

Thirty-odd years in the same Bible. A husband buried. Three raised and one lost. A job you loved and lost. A stretch in your fifties you do not talk about, and you came out of it.

You listed all of that and then concluded there is nothing there. Read it again as though it were somebody else's list.

A girl of nineteen is looking for exactly one thing, which is evidence that a person can go through a whole life with God and still be here and still be plain about it. You are the evidence. She has been sitting next to the evidence for eleven weeks.

You are carrying the only thing a nineteen year old is actually looking for and you have been calling it nothing. Scripture says one generation shall commend Your works to another, and shall declare Your mighty acts (Psalm 145:4), and it is the Holy Spirit who arranges that commending, usually in seats and kitchens rather than anywhere official.

And the four minutes.

Twice she has asked something short. Both times you answered in six words and moved to the weather.

That is not coldness. It is a woman who genuinely does not believe she is the intended recipient of the question, and so she hands it back gently, which is what a modest person does.

But a girl who has asked twice and been given the weather twice will probably not ask a third time, and eleven weeks of sitting is a great deal of effort from somebody who does not say very much.

You are being asked, and answering is not presumption, it is simply not deflecting. It is written that a word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in a setting of silver (Proverbs 25:11), and it is His Spirit who supplies the word, which means you are not required to have prepared one in advance.

And what this page is not doing.

Nobody is telling you to take her under your wing, or to arrange anything, or to become something to her. There is no role here and nothing to set up, and a woman of sixty-eight does not need a project.

You are being asked for one true answer and nothing beyond it. Scripture says as each has received a gift, use it to serve one another (1 Peter 4:10), and one true answer in a doorway is a use of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who decides what it becomes.