The Gaps on the Wall

The stairs go up in a dogleg with a window on the turn, and the sun comes through it about five o'clock and lies along the wall, and the wall is where the photographs are.

They start at the bottom in the little gold frames her mother gave her, one for each September, going up in a neat diagonal that follows the rail. Reception, with the fringe cut at home and the collar not straight. Year one, missing a tooth and delighted about it. Year two, year three, the same background every time, that mottled blue they use, the same slightly startled smile.

Then the wall goes plain.

Four hooks with nothing on them, because she put the hooks in years ago when she still believed the frames were coming. And after the plain part the row starts again, and the boy in the first new frame is much older than the boy in the last old one, and there is no version of him in between anywhere in this house.

She goes up and down these stairs maybe fifteen times a day. Laundry. Bed. The airing cupboard. And every single time, without deciding to, she does the arithmetic on the plain part of the wall. She has done it so many times she does not even use numbers any more. She just feels the count go through her, somewhere under the ribs, on the third stair from the turn.

Nobody else in this house sees it. That is the strangest part. Her son thunders down past it twice a morning with his bag half open and has never once looked at the wall, and last Christmas he stood on that exact stair to reach the top of the tree and put his hand flat on the plain bit to steady himself, and did not notice what he was leaning on.

She has thought about filling it. She has thought about hanging something else there, a mirror, a print, anything. She never does, and she could not tell you why, except that covering it feels like a lie and leaving it feels like the truth, and she would rather have the truth on the wall even if she is the only one who can read it.

Five o'clock. The sun on the turn of the stairs. The dust going up in it.

And you have a wall. Yours might not have hooks in it. It might be a row of years you can name to the month, or a stretch of your life you skip over when somebody asks you about yourself, or a decade that has no photographs because you were not in a mood to be photographed. And you know exactly how it got that way, and nobody took it from you.

I am not going to ask you how. I am not going to guess, and I am not going to hand you a lesson that those years were secretly teaching you, because that is a thing people say to make an unbearable thing tidy, and it is not true, and you would know.

What redemption is for

There is a reason this word exists, and the reason is you on the stairs.

Redemption is not a word for a life that went smoothly. Nobody needs a redeemer for a wall with no gaps in it. The word only ever gets used about something that genuinely went, that is genuinely not there, and that somebody with the right has come and bought back. If the years were still on the wall we would not need this page and God would not need this word.

You are inside the exact situation the word was made for, and you were never the exception it does not cover. Scripture says that in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the force of a sentence, who carries that off a page and onto the third stair from the turn.

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.Ephesians 1:7

Look at what is in that verse and what is not. Redemption, and forgiveness, in the same breath, as one act. Not redemption for the ones who can account for themselves. Not forgiveness for the years with a good enough reason behind them. He puts the two words side by side because they are one motion of the same hand, and there is no examination between them.

And I want to say this before we go a step further, because for some of you it is the whole thing. If those years were taken out of your hands rather than spent by you, if you were young, or frightened, or lied to, or worn down until yes was the only word you had left, then you did not trade anything. A pushed signature is not a signature. Scripture never once calls a person in that position a seller, and the buying back is exactly the same for you, and the shame that has been living on your stairs was never yours to carry.

You have redemption, present tense, in your hand right now, and it is not a thing being processed somewhere on your behalf. It is written that He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption (Colossians 1:13), and the same Spirit who moved on the man who wrote that is moving on it while you stand on the stairs.

Handed over with nothing attached

Here is the part that takes people the longest, and it is not the theology. It is the handing over.

Because when you finally go to give those years to God, you will want to bring the explanation with them. Everybody does. You want to set the years down and then stand there and account for them, put them in context, make sure He has the full picture, establish that you know exactly how bad it was so that nobody can accuse you later of not having known. That is not repentance. That is a defense, prepared by somebody who is expecting a hearing.

There is no hearing. That is the thing nobody told you.

You are handing over years to Somebody who is not going to read the list back to you. His word says that as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us (Psalm 103:12), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes east and west a distance rather than a poem.

And now the honest half, because a message that tidies your life away has lied to you about your own life. The wall does not fill in. I am not going to stand here and tell you that those photographs quietly appear overnight, or that the boy in the missing frames comes back at the age he was. The record stands. Four hooks with nothing on them is a true record of a real thing, and God is not embarrassed by true records.

What changes is the verdict. And the verdict was never the wall's to give. A row of empty hooks has been passing sentence on a woman fifteen times a day for years, and it has no standing to pass anything, and today it loses the job.

You are not under a sentence, and the count you have been feeling under your ribs on the stairs is not a ruling from God. It is written that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1), and it is the Holy Spirit who moves that from a verse you could quote to a thing your body believes on the third stair.

So the one specific thing being bought back today is not your whole life and not your peace in general. It is those years. The plain part of the wall. The stretch you can name by its dates. Bought back by the One with the right to act, with the record standing exactly as it is, and with nothing left in it for you to complete.

You are being given those exact years back with nothing left to settle, and there is no examination waiting on the other side of the handing over. Scripture says that where sin increased, grace abounded all the more (Romans 5:20), and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes all the more mean enough for the plain part of a wall.