The Hymn She Cannot Sing

It is the third verse and she has been mouthing it for about eleven years.

Nobody has ever noticed. She is not a loud singer at the best of times and she stands where she stands, and the whole thing takes about forty seconds, and then the fourth verse comes and she joins back in.

It is not a bad hymn. She would tell you she loves it. She chose it for her mother's funeral, and she meant that, and the first two verses go straight through her every time.

The third verse is about Him coming back.

And something in her simply will not do it. Not will not in the sense of refusing, because she has tried, more than once, in the car where nobody could hear. Her voice goes and her chest does something and she ends up not singing it.

She has never told anybody. There is not a way to raise it. Everybody in that room finds the third verse the best one. There is a man two rows in front who always puts his head back on it, visibly glad, and she watches him do it and feels about four feet outside the whole thing.

She is not carrying anything. She has checked, more than once, in the way people do at three in the morning.

She simply cannot get that verse out, and she has been managing it quietly for eleven years.

If there is a verse you go quiet on, come and sit down by the fire. Nobody is going to explain anything at you.

Paul names what the Spirit is not, and fear is the thing he rules out

There is a sentence written to a frightened young man, and it is unusually specific about where fear does not come from.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.2 Timothy 1:7

Paul is not telling Timothy to be braver. Read it again and notice that there is no instruction in it at all. It is a statement about supply: this is what was given, and that is what was not.

And the thing ruled out is named first, which is a deliberate order. He deals with the fear before he offers the alternatives, because a person who is frightened cannot hear a list.

You have not been given the fear, and that is a statement about what is in you rather than about what is ahead. 2 Timothy 1:7 rules the spirit of fear out of the supply, and it is the Holy Spirit named in that same line as power and love and a sound mind, which means whatever happens in your chest on the third verse did not come from God and cannot be read as your standing with Him.

Nobody is going to explain anything to you

Now let me be plain about what this article will not do, because part of what has kept you quiet is the fear of being handed a diagram.

There is no description of anything coming. No sequence, no order, no chart, nothing about the state of the world, and not one sentence designed to make you take it more seriously by making it more alarming. This site does not use fear as a motive on any subject, and it will certainly not use it here, on somebody who already has more of it than she asked for.

Nor is there going to be an explanation of your chest. Nobody here knows where it started, and looking for the origin would turn this into an excavation, and there is enough to do without that. Psalm 103:14 says he knoweth our frame, he remembereth that we are dust, and it is the same Spirit who comforts rather than investigates.

What I will do is show you the shape the passage actually asks for, because the shape is the part that has gone wrong.

Look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption draweth nigh.Luke 21:28

That is not the posture of somebody bracing. Bracing is head down, shoulders up, made small. He asks for a head lifted, which is the shape a body makes when somebody it loves is arriving.

And He gives the reason in the same breath, and the reason is not an examination. Redemption, which is a word about being bought back and brought home.

You are not being brought toward an assessment, and the word names what is coming toward you. Luke 21:28 puts redemption drawing near as the reason for a lifted head, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the earnest of that inheritance in Ephesians 1:14, which means the thing you have been bracing for is described in Scripture as a homecoming.

And the man two rows in front with his head back is not further along than you. He is simply somebody whose body learned something different, and bodies are taught by what happened to them rather than by what they concluded.

You are not behind anybody in that room, and there is no queue you have failed to keep up with. Galatians 3:26 says you are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, with no order of merit anywhere in it, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the witness with our spirit that we are His, which means the man with his head back and the woman mouthing the third verse are standing on exactly the same ground.

God is the one holding you, and He is not standing at the end of this waiting to find something out.