She has lived at the end of that road for a very long time.
Long enough that she remembers when the corner shop was a corner shop. Long enough that half the street calls her by a name only about nine people still use. She keeps a light on in the front room, always has, and there is a running joke that you know you are nearly home when you see it from the top of the hill.
Somebody asked her at the street party what she wanted for the year ahead.
She thought about it properly, which is her way, and then she said something that stopped the conversation for a second.
I do not want a big year. I want to still be standing here in twenty of them.
Everybody laughed and moved on and refilled her glass. And she sat there thinking about what she had just said, because she had surprised herself with how much she meant it.
Here is the part she did not say.
Somewhere in the last while, the wanting had turned into a weight. She had started, without ever deciding to, treating the finishing as her own responsibility. Keep going. Do not let it slip. Stay sharp. Do not be one of those people who quietly goes off.
Nothing dramatic. Nobody watching her would see a thing. She is exactly as she has always been, and the light is still on in the front room.
But there is a difference between a woman walking a long road and a woman carrying the whole road on her back, and she had crossed from one to the other somewhere without noticing.
If you know that weight, pull up a chair at this table. Nothing here is a warning.
The arriving was never on your shoulders
There is a sentence at the very end of Jude, and it is the best sentence in the letter, and it is almost always read too fast.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of His glory with great joy.Jude 24
Slow down on the verbs and notice whose they are.
Able to keep you. Able to present you. Both of them are His. Not one of them is yours. The person in that sentence is not doing the keeping and is not doing the arriving, and the entire construction is a statement about the capability of somebody else.
And then look at what is waiting at the end of it. Not relief. Not a narrow escape. Great joy, and the joy is His, and He is the one bringing you into it.
You are being kept from stumbling, and you were never the one responsible for getting yourself there. Jude 24 puts every verb on God's side, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the guarantee of what is coming in Ephesians 1:14, so the arriving is a thing being done to you rather than a thing you are managing.
The long haul is His subject before it is yours
Now here is what I want to say to a woman who has quietly picked up the weight of her own perseverance.
Nobody is telling you to loosen your grip on the good things you hold. Keep the light on. Keep being who you are. The keeping you do is real and it matters.
But there is a difference between a keeper and a load bearer, and you have been doing the second job without a contract for it.
Paul had the same two hands in his letter to Timothy. He said he was persuaded that God was able to guard what he had entrusted to Him, and in the same breath he told Timothy to guard what had been entrusted to him, by the Holy Spirit. Two deposits. One weight, and it is not on the person.
You have a God who is able, in the present tense, and His ability is not waiting on your stamina. 2 Timothy 1:12 says He is able to guard what has been committed to Him until that day, and it is His Spirit who is the down payment on the whole thing, so the twenty years you are anxious about are already inside a keeping that started before you got worried about them.
I am not going to tell you how those years will go. Nobody can and nobody should. There is no promise here about your health, your street, your family or your circumstances, and any article that hands you one is selling something.
What there is, is this. You are held by somebody who does not get tired, and you are held tonight. Isaiah 40:28 says He does not faint or grow weary and there is no searching of His understanding, and it is His Spirit within you who keeps a person going long past the point where their own resolve ran out.
That is why watchfulness on this road can be restful. God is the one keeping you while you keep what He gave you, and the light in your front room is not what is holding the street together.
Something is on this table for you, at a street party or in a quiet front room or wherever you are reading this.
You have a keeper who is able, and you have Him now, and the finishing is His work rather than the sum of your upkeep. Philippians 1:6 says the One who began a good work in you will bring it to completion, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the seal and the guarantee on that, which means the end of the road is not a thing you have to hold up with both arms.
Put the weight down. Not the light in the window, not the faithfulness, not the ordinary keeping you have done for decades. Just the weight. The bit where you are personally responsible for arriving.
You are not less watchful without it. You are simply watching from inside somebody else's keeping, which is the only place watchfulness has ever been able to rest.
Declare this over yourself
You speak these as somebody standing in a place given to you rather than earned. The authority is Christ's own and delegated, and it is the Spirit named in Jude and in Ephesians who does the keeping and the presenting rather than your stamina. How the years actually go is His to decide, so leave the outcome with Him and simply say what is true.
- Weight of arriving that I picked up quietly, you are not mine to carry and you never were assigned. Jude says He is able to keep me from stumbling and to present me with great joy, and His Spirit is the guarantee on the whole of it. You go down on this table tonight.
- Fear about twenty years I cannot see, you have no chair at this street, and in the name of Jesus I set you out past the bunting. Scripture says He does not faint or grow weary, and His Spirit keeps a person going long past their own resolve. Nothing about the length of this road is too much for the One holding it.
- Father, You are able to guard what I entrusted to You until that day, and You are doing it tonight while the music is still going. I hand You the keeping of the sentence I want to be true of me. I finish this road held, and the joy at the end of it was Your idea first.
Jude 24
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