The Young Driver Keeps Asking Him Things

The lad is about twenty-six and he has been at that yard for a year and a half.

It happens at the coffee machine, mostly, or in the ten minutes before a load goes out, and it happens about every three weeks, which is often enough that it has become a pattern and rare enough that it never feels like a conversation.

He asks a real question.

Not about the job. He has other people for the job. He asks the kind of question a young man asks when he has worked out that the older man in the room believes something and has not made a thing of it: how do you do that, or does it get easier, or a plain one about God with no wrapping on it at all.

And every single time, the older man says something light.

Not dismissive. He is not a dismissive man. But something short, with a small joke in it, that closes the subject warmly and lets everybody get on, and the lad laughs and takes his coffee and goes.

Four or five times now.

And he has never once said the true thing, and he can tell you exactly why, because he has thought about it in the cab.

He is not qualified. He has not read anything. He has been in the same church for nine years and has never done anything in it beyond stacking chairs, and there is a stretch of his own life he would not want held up as an example, and he has an argument going in his own head about something in Judges that he cannot resolve.

That is the list. He has been over it enough times to have it in order.

And underneath the list there is a simpler sentence, which is: I am barely holding my own together, and this lad is asking me like I have something.

He does have something. Thirty-one years of it, and a marriage that went through a bad two years and came out, and a specific way of praying in a truck that he did not invent and that has held him up in weather that would have taken a lot of men down.

But none of that is on a certificate.

And you have somebody asking you. Every few weeks, in a doorway or a car park, and you have been answering light every time, and you know exactly which question they are actually asking.

What was handed to you gets handed along

There is a sentence in Second Timothy that describes how the whole of this has ever worked, and the thing to notice is how ordinary the mechanism is.

and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men, who will be able to teach others also.2 Timothy 2:2

What you have heard.

Not what you have mastered. Not what you can defend against an objection, and not a body of material you have completed. What you have heard, which is whatever actually got into you, which for you is thirty-one years of a life and a way of praying in a cab.

And then entrust it. Hand it over. That is the entire operation and there is no examination in front of it.

You have something in your hands that came to you from somewhere, and handing it along is the ordinary way it has always moved. It is written to entrust what you have heard to others who will be able to teach others also (2 Timothy 2:2), and it is the Holy Spirit who does the actual work in the person receiving it, which is why a man does not have to be adequate to the task.

Now the list, because it deserves a straight answer item by item.

Not qualified. Nobody in that sentence is qualified. It says faithful, which means somebody who keeps turning up, and you have turned up at the same church for nine years and stacked chairs, which is a nine year record of exactly the thing the word means.

Has not read anything. Neither had eleven of the twelve, and the one who had read everything spent three years being taken apart before he was any use.

A stretch of your own life you would not hold up as an example. That is true of every person Scripture uses, without exception, and the ones who had no such stretch are the Pharisees.

You are not disqualified by any item on that list, and the list has been running unopposed in your head for a year and a half. Scripture says God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, and what is weak in the world to shame the strong (1 Corinthians 1:27), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been putting a real question into a young man's mouth about every three weeks, which is not an accident and is not about your credentials.

And the argument about Judges.

You cannot resolve it. Fine. He did not ask you about Judges. He asked whether it gets easier, and you have thirty-one years of an answer to that which does not require the other thing to be settled first.

You are allowed to answer the question that was asked and leave the rest open. It is written that we know in part and we prophesy in part (1 Corinthians 13:9), and it is His Spirit who has never once required a man to have finished before he could be useful, because on that rule nobody would ever have said anything to anybody.

And the simple sentence underneath the list.

I am barely holding my own together, and this lad is asking me like I have something.

He is asking you because he has watched you. Not your best year. This one, in which you are barely holding it together, and something about the way you are doing that has made a twenty-six year old ask a question four or five times.

You have been read correctly by somebody who has been watching for a year and a half. Scripture says by this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an ordinary man legible to a younger one in a yard, which is not something anybody can fake and not something you did on purpose.