Passed Between Six Desks

The damp came through the back bedroom wall the first cold week of last fall. It started as a shadow the size of a hand, up near the ceiling, and by Christmas it had come down the wall like a map of somewhere, and by spring the wallpaper had let go along the top edge and hung forward, and her grandson stopped sleeping in there.

She has a folder now. It is a green one, and the corners have gone soft.

The first call went to Repairs, who gave her a reference and told her somebody would attend. The second call went to Repairs, who could not find the reference and gave her a new one. The third went to Leasing, because it turned out the wall was a shared wall and shared walls are not Repairs. Leasing gave her a reference beginning with a different letter and told her the case sat with Property Services. Property Services said the case had been closed as duplicate, which she found interesting, because nobody had ever come.

Six desks. Eleven months. Four reference numbers, two of which are apparently the same number.

She is not a shouter. She writes things down. On the inside cover of the green folder there is a list in ballpoint of every name she has spoken to, with the date beside it, and eleven months in, not one of those names has ever appeared twice. That is the thing that gets into her at three in the morning. Not the wall. The fact that eleven human beings have held her situation in their hands for the length of one phone call and then set it down again, gently, and moved it one desk along.

Nobody has ever said the words: this is mine, and I am dealing with it.

Then a woman from two doors down, who worked in that building for nineteen years before her knees retired her, heard about it over the fence. She said, what day are you going in. She said, I am coming with you. And on the day she wore her good coat, and she sat next to her in the plastic chairs in the afternoon light with a bag on her knee, and when the number came up she stood up too, and she leaned on the counter and said, quite pleasantly, I know how this works, I am here with her, and neither of us is leaving this desk until somebody's name goes on this.

She had two things nobody else in eleven months had held at the same time. She knew that building, so she had the standing to speak in it. And she was willing to use it.

You know this ache and it is not really about the wall. It is the discovery that everybody who could help you either does not have the standing, or has the standing and will not spend it. It is the quiet, reasonable conclusion you have come to about your own situation: that it is nobody's, and it is going to stay nobody's, because there is no such person as somebody who is both close enough to act and willing to.

Two things, and almost nobody has both

There is a word in the Old Testament for the person your whole situation was waiting for. Go'el. It gets translated redeemer, and it does not mean a kind stranger. It means the relative who is near enough to have the legal right to step into your trouble and act as though your trouble were his own.

That is the shape of the whole office. Nearness gives him the right. Love makes him use it. Take either half away and you have exactly what she has: eleven names on the inside cover of a green folder.

Their Redeemer is strong; the Lord of hosts is his name: he shall thoroughly plead their cause, that he may give rest to the land.Jeremiah 50:34

You are not without a redeemer, and you were never as unrepresented as the last eleven months have taught you to believe. Scripture calls him strong and names him the Lord of hosts in the same breath, and it is the Holy Spirit, not my enthusiasm, who takes a sentence written about a whole exiled nation and stands it up beside one woman and one green folder.

Look at the verb, because the verb is where God tells you what kind of help this is. He shall thoroughly plead their cause. The Hebrew doubles it, the way you double a word in your own house when you mean business: he will contend their contention. He does not review the case. He does not comment on the case. He takes the case, as his own case, and he goes into the room with it.

That is the opposite of a referral. A referral is what you have been receiving for eleven months, and a referral is somebody agreeing that your trouble is real while making sure it stays yours.

You have somebody who has taken your matter as his own matter, and it is no longer being handed along. It is written that Jesus is not ashamed to call us brethren, which is nearness, and that he ever lives to make intercession for us, which is willingness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes those two lines land as one person walking into the building with you.

He is after rest, not activity

Now read the end of that verse, because the end of it is the tender part and almost nobody quotes it. He thoroughly pleads their cause, that he may give rest to the land.

Rest is the aim. Not a resolution letter. Not a note on a system saying the matter is progressing. Rest. The thing you have not had since the shadow came down the wall, because a case nobody owns has to be carried by you at three in the morning, every night, in case you are the only one still holding it.

You are being given rest, and rest is the actual outcome he is working toward and not a bonus at the end of it. His word says he gives his beloved sleep, and the same Spirit who raised Christ from the dead is the one who unclenches a hand that has been holding a folder for eleven months.

I want to be careful here, because I am not going to tell you what will happen to your situation, and anybody who does is selling you something. God may move in it next week and he may move in it in a way you did not ask for. What I can tell you, because it is written and not because I feel it, is who is holding it while he does.

And I am not going to pretend the eleven months away either. They happened. The names in ballpoint on the inside cover happened. The record stands. What changes is the verdict on it: not nobody's, not hopeless, not the file at the bottom of a pile in a building where everybody is busy. Owned. The record stands and the verdict is changed, and in this house we say both of those in the same breath or we are not telling you the truth about your own life.

You have been taken up by somebody with the right to act, and the right came from him coming near, not from you qualifying. Scripture says that in the fullness of time God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, which is how he got near enough to have the standing, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that from being a doctrine and makes it a person in the room.

You are not a nuisance in this, and you were never the kind of case somebody takes on reluctantly. The word says he loved us and gave himself for us, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reaches the part of you that has quietly concluded otherwise over eleven months of being moved along.