The Woman They Told to Be Quiet

Twelve years ago on a Wednesday night, in a fellowship hall with folding chairs and a coffee urn at the back, Doreen stood up and said out loud that she needed help.

She had not planned to. That is the part she goes back over. The leader had asked whether anybody had anything, the way leaders do at the end when the room is already reaching for coats, and something in Doreen came up out of her chest and stood her on her feet before she had picked the words. What came out was: I need help. I cannot do this by myself anymore.

Then the room did what rooms do.

Somebody laid a hand on her arm, gently, and said, oh honey. Somebody else said, let us take that offline. The leader said, we will absolutely come back to that, and made a note on the corner of the agenda, and then said, all right, does anybody have anything for the parking lot situation, and eleven people had something for the parking lot situation.

Nobody was cruel. She wants that understood, and I want it understood too, because we are not putting anybody in this article on trial. They were tired. It was late. There is a real chance that two people in that hall meant to call her the next day and the week ate it.

But nobody came back to it. Not that night, not that month. And Doreen picked up her coat with the note about her still sitting on the corner of somebody's agenda, and she drove home, and she made a decision on the way that she has kept for twelve years without ever once naming it.

She decided that her asking is an interruption.

You would never know it to look at her. She is the first person in that building on a Sunday morning. She runs a table at every event and she asks everybody else how they are and she means it. When someone tells her something hard she does not do let us take that offline. She sits all the way down and she stays. She has become the most attentive listener in the whole congregation and there is a reason for that, and the reason is not a happy one.

Twelve years is a long time to hold your breath.

And now I am going to talk to you, because I doubt you are reading this by accident. Maybe your fellowship hall was a family kitchen or a doctor's office or a phone call where you finally said the true thing and heard somebody change the subject. You made the same decision on the way home, and you have kept it, and you have been so gracious about it that not one person has noticed. So hear me. You have been heard the entire twelve years, and the room's response was never the verdict on your voice. It is written in Psalm 34:17 that the righteous cry and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles, and the Holy Spirit has been holding that sentence over you every single time you decided not to say anything.

He stopped the whole crowd for one voice they were hushing

There is a man on a roadside outside Jericho and the crowd around him is enormous and moving. He hears who is passing and he starts shouting. And the text does not soften what happens next: many charged him that he should hold his peace. Be quiet. Not one person. Many.

So he shouted louder, and here is the sentence I want carved into you.

And Jesus stood still, and commanded him to be called. And they call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee.Mark 10:49

Read it slowly. Jesus stood still. A whole procession is moving toward the most significant week in human history and He stops it dead in the road, in the dust, over the voice the crowd had already ruled out of order.

And then look at what He does with the ones who were hushing him. He does not rebuke them and He does not go around them. He commands them to call him. The same mouths that said be quiet are the mouths that have to say, be of good comfort, rise, he is calling you. That is not a small detail. That is Christ refusing to let the hushing stand as the final word about a man.

You are the one He stops for, and the stopping is not a favor He is weighing up. It is written in Mark 10:49 that He stood still and commanded them to call the man, and the Spirit has been standing on that verse over you for twelve years while you sat in a folding chair and said nothing.

Notice also what Bartimaeus was not required to do. He was not required to be composed. He was not required to phrase it better, to wait for the appropriate moment, or to be less inconvenient about it. He shouted in the middle of somebody else's meeting and the shout is what got recorded in the word of God forever. You have never once been an interruption to God, and there is no version of the story where your asking came at a bad time. He promised in Isaiah 65:24 that before they call He answers and while they are yet speaking He hears, and His Spirit is not checking the agenda before He turns toward you.

He came first, and He came before you asked

Now here is the ground this whole site stands on, and I am going to put it in front of you plainly, because you have spent twelve years believing that being wanted is something you have to successfully request.

The claim on your life was not a response to your asking. It came first. Before the fellowship hall. Before the drive home. Before the decision you made on that road, and before the twelve years of keeping it. Nothing about how well you asked, how patiently you waited, or how gracious you were about being passed over had one thing to do with it.

It is already settled that He came for you, and He did not come because somebody finally put your name on an agenda. His word says it flatly in Luke 19:10, that the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost, and His Spirit is what makes you hear the word seek as a word about you and not about strangers.

I need you to feel the difference between two sentences that sound alike. One is: if you cry out, He might come. The other is: He came, and now you can cry out. The first one puts the whole weight on your voice and your timing and your worthiness, and that is the sentence that has been running your last twelve years. The second one is the gospel, and it puts the weight where it has always been, on the One who stood still in the road.

You were sought before you ever opened your mouth, and the seeking was His idea. The Holy Spirit does not argue with what is written in 1 John 4:19. He repeats it, over and over, in exactly the rooms where you have gone quiet.