Nobody Even Knocked

When did somebody last actually knock on your door?

Not a delivery. Not the post. Somebody arriving, unannounced, expecting to come in.

Take your time. For a lot of people reading this the answer is a long time ago and for some of you it is years.

And yet the bracing happens every day. A van slows down outside and something in your chest goes. A car door shuts nearby and you look up. Somebody walks past the window and there is a half second where your whole body prepares.

That is what I want to talk about tonight. Not a knock. The waiting for one.

Because a body that is braced is doing work. Real, measurable, tiring work, all day, every day, against an event that has not happened in three years.

Call upon me in the day of trouble

There is a phrase that runs all the way through the Psalms and I want to take it slowly.

What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust; I will not fear what flesh can do unto me. (Psalm 56:3 and 4, King James Version)

What time I am afraid.

Notice the timing built into that sentence. Not: I am afraid all the time. Not: I will get rid of the fear and then trust. What time I am afraid. When it happens. In the moment it arrives.

That is a verse written for somebody who has fear as an event rather than as a climate. And your fear has stopped being an event. It has become the weather you live in, and it runs whether or not there is anything happening.

The verse assumes something you have lost, which is the gap between the moments.

You are not made to be braced continually, and Psalm 56:3 has never once described fear as a state a person lives inside permanently. It is written as what time I am afraid, which puts the fear in a moment rather than in a life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person back the space between the moments.

You have been standing to attention against a door for three years. The word puts trust into the moment fear actually arrives, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a body stand down between them.

The bracing outlived the danger

Now here is the mechanism, and I think naming it helps.

The bracing was not irrational. It started when there was something to brace against. There was a period where people did come, or one particular person did, or a knock genuinely was a problem.

And a body learns that fast. One or two bad experiences and the response gets built in. That is not weakness, it is how a body is supposed to work, and without it people would not survive very much. A house in that state is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the woman living in it.

You are carrying a readiness that was correct when it was built, and no body anywhere has ever once been at fault for learning something quickly. Psalm 56:3 keeps fear inside its own moment rather than inside a whole life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person back the space between the moments.

What a body does not do well is unlearn. The danger passed and the readiness stayed, and the readiness has been running ever since with nothing to do, which is why it now attaches itself to a van slowing down.

And here is the practical part. A readiness is very hard to argue with and quite easy to satisfy. You cannot talk yourself out of it. But you can change the situation it is watching for, so that the situation it is watching for stops being an emergency.

That is what a cleared route does. It does not remove the readiness. It removes the reason.

You were never being ridiculous, and a body that learned to brace has never once been a body doing something wrong. Psalm 56:3 assumes fear arrives and passes rather than settles, and the Spirit of God is the one who deals with the situation instead of scolding the response.

So tonight is a route, and the route is aimed at the bracing.

You are permitted to change what your door means tonight, and changing it has never once required anybody to walk through it. It is written that the trust goes into the moment the fear comes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in fifteen minutes that lower the temperature of a hallway.

Clear the path to the first chair

So here is the whole of what I am asking.

Start at your front door. Walk to the first chair a person could sit in.

Move only what is on that path. Fifteen minutes and then stop.

The point of this is not visitors. The point is that when a van slows down tomorrow, something in you knows the hall is fine.

You are able to change what a knock would mean tonight, and doing that has never once needed a knock to happen. Psalm 56:3 puts the trust in the moment, and the Spirit of God is present in a hall cleared for an event that may never come.