Sixty one years and she has not missed a Sunday except for illness and the winter of the hip, and she counted the illnesses once and there were four.
She has cleaned that building. She has done the flowers for about thirty years and she did them the week her husband died, which people still mention and which she wishes they would not, because there was nothing remarkable in it and the flowers wanted doing.
She has given, every week, out of a pension that has never been generous.
She has prayed. Morning and night, the same shape, since she was nineteen, and she has never skipped it, not once, and she would tell you that the not skipping is the whole of the discipline and that anybody can do it if they will just not stop.
She is eighty.
And here is what she said to her own daughter in the spring, in the kitchen, with her back to her, which is where the truest things get said in that family.
She said: "I have done my duty by Him. I do not know that I have ever been fond of Him."
Her daughter did not know what to say and said something, and the kettle boiled, and they never mentioned it again.
She has thought about it every week since.
Because it is true, and it is not a complaint. She would want that understood before anything. She is not accusing God of anything and she is not sorry for herself. If she had her time again she would do the same sixty one years the same way and she thinks it was right.
It is just that when she goes back through it, and she has gone back through it a great deal since the spring, she cannot find an occasion of being carried.
Plenty of carrying. No being carried.
You know that sentence. Yours may be shorter than sixty one years. But you know what it is to have a faithful life with God that consists entirely of things you have done for Him, and to go looking, late, for something that came the other way.
Neither one of them is a duty
Let me name the pit before we open the book, because if this becomes a criticism of a faithful life it will be a wicked article and she would be right to stop reading.
The sixty one years are not the problem. They are one of the more admirable things anybody reading this will encounter today, and God is not indifferent to a woman who did the flowers the week her husband died.
The pit is that duty was the only channel that was ever built, and that a life can be entirely faithful and entirely one directional, and that at eighty a woman goes looking for the return traffic and finds nothing, and concludes that this is simply what her relationship with God is and always was going to be.
Here is the verse. It is out of a song Moses sang at the end of his own life, which is a good place for an old woman to be reading.
Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.Deuteronomy 32:18
Two halves in one line, and one God in both.
The Rock that begat thee. A father's word, and a strong one.
And the second half, in the Hebrew, is the word for a woman bringing a child to birth, which is why a good many translations render it as the God who gave you birth.
Now here is the thing for a woman who has done her duty for sixty one years.
Neither of those is a duty. Not on His side and not on hers. Begetting is not a service performed. Giving birth is not an obligation discharged. Both of them are things God did toward a person, before that person had done anything at all, and neither of them can be reciprocated and neither of them was ever meant to be.
Here I draw the line in the same paragraph, because on this ground the two never travel apart. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. Deuteronomy 32:18 does not make God half a father and half a mother, and it does not give Him a soft side. It uses two pictures, both chosen by Him, for one God whom neither exhausts. He is never addressed by any title Scripture does not give Him, and the pictures stay in the form He gave them.
Take that in your chair, and know it is not me being kind to an old woman, it is what is written. The two things this verse says God did for you were not duties, and neither of them required anything from you. Deuteronomy 32:18 has both halves in one line, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens the return traffic in a woman who has had one channel since nineteen.
You cannot say which of those was the faithful one either, and you do not have to work it out at eighty.
You are carried by Him and not merely employed by Him, and you were carried through sixty years you thought you were walking on your own. Deuteronomy 32:18 names the Rock that begat you and the God who gave you birth in one line, and neither of those is a post you were appointed to, and it is the Holy Spirit who gets that into a woman who has only ever known how to be dutiful.
What you can do is a very small and very strange thing, which is to stop, for one minute, doing anything for Him at all.
That will feel improper. It has been sixty one years and there is no muscle for it. But look at the verse again: the two things it names are things done toward you, and neither of them wants a response, and a woman standing very still in front of a fact is not being idle.
You were begotten and you were given birth, and neither one of those was a duty on anybody's part. That is Deuteronomy 32:18 read exactly as it stands, and it is the Holy Spirit who opens the direction that has never once been open, and He is not in a hurry with a woman of eighty and He does not require the sixty one years to be re-examined first.
And what you said to your daughter in the kitchen with your back turned. I want to handle that gently, because it has been on you since the spring.
It was an honest sentence and honest sentences from eighty year old women are worth more than most prayers. It is not a confession of a wasted life and it is not evidence against you. It is a woman noticing, correctly, that a road she has walked in one direction for sixty one years has another lane in it, and that she has never once been in the other lane.
The lane is there. It has been there since before nineteen. Nobody was ever stopping you.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in your own chair. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over a channel that has run one way since you were nineteen is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on your finding an occasion of being carried, and you may not. These stand on what is written in Deuteronomy and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by sixty one years of anything. When the other lane opens, and how, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- Sixty one years of duty, you are real and you are honorable and you are not the whole of it, and I say so in the name of Jesus. Deuteronomy 32:18 says the Rock begat me and God gave me birth, and neither of those was a duty on anybody's part.
- Sentence I said with my back turned in that kitchen, that I do not know I have ever been fond of Him, you are honest and you are not a verdict on my life. It is written that both halves stand in one line about one God, and His Spirit is the one who opens the direction I have never been in.
- Lord, You are neither male nor female, and You both begat me and gave me birth. I sit in my own chair and say out loud that I am not doing anything for You for one minute, and I let the four names go past.
Deuteronomy 32:18
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
