The Voice She Was Handed

Her aunt had a front room with a piano in it that nobody could play properly, including her aunt.

That is where it happened, on Saturday mornings, from when she was about nine.

Her aunt was not a musician. She was a woman who worked in a laundry and who had decided, on the basis of hearing a child sing in a kitchen, that this was a thing worth taking seriously, and she took it seriously in the only way she knew, which was to sit in a chair in that front room every Saturday and make her sing the same thing over and over until it was right.

Nobody else in the family thought much of it. It was a nice voice. Lots of children have nice voices.

Her aunt did not care what anybody else thought. She said something to her once, when she was about thirteen, that she has never repeated to a living soul.

She sings every week now. Has done for thirty years. She is the one they put on the thing that needs somebody who will not wobble.

And here is what happened a few weeks ago, standing at the back before it started.

She thought about her voice, briefly, the way you think about your own hands. Just a passing awareness of a tool.

And then a second thought arrived on top of it and would not go away.

That was given to me. On Saturday mornings. By a woman who worked in a laundry and had no idea what she was doing.

Thirty years of using it and she had stopped knowing that it came from somewhere, through somebody, on purpose.

If your gift has become an ability, come and sit down here. Nothing here is an alarm.

He does not take it back

There is a line in Romans that people use in arguments and which is actually one of the steadiest sentences Paul ever wrote.

For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.Romans 11:29

Irrevocable. He does not take it back. Which means the giving is not an event that happened once and receded into the past. It is a standing fact about what you are holding, and it is as true this week as it was in a front room on a Saturday morning.

And notice that the verse puts gifts and calling together, which is Paul's way of saying that the thing itself and the summons to use it came in the same package, from the same hand, and neither half has been withdrawn.

You were handed a real thing on purpose, and it is still a gift in your hands this week. Romans 11:29 puts the giving beyond recall, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named as the seal and guarantee on everything God gives in Ephesians 1:13, which means what has gone quiet is your noticing rather than the thing itself.

Scripture is comfortable naming the people it came through

Now the second half, and it matters because the specific human being in your story tends to get lost.

Paul writes to Timothy and does something you would not expect from a letter about doctrine. He names the women.

I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice.2 Timothy 1:5

He knew their names. He wrote them down. And two verses later he tells Timothy to fan into flame the gift of God that is in him, and seven verses after that to guard the good deposit by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us.

That whole opening is one movement: this came to you through a specific person, it is real, keep it, and you do not keep it on your own strength.

You are not holding this on your own, and you never have been. 2 Timothy 1:14 names the Holy Spirit as the strength inside the keeping, so thirty years of not wobbling has not been thirty years of your own reliability.

And notice what the moment at the back of the room actually was. You have been shown this early, and you were shown it gently, and nothing has been broken. Romans 2:4 says it is the kindness of God that leads a person, and it is His Spirit who carries it at exactly the temperature a person can take, which is why what came was one thought about a Saturday morning rather than a review of your character.

Now the half that makes the watching restful. You are the one being kept, and that has been true every week you were too busy to think about it. 1 Peter 1:5 says you are guarded by the power of God, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the guarantee, so this arrangement has never once rested on how attentive you were being.

Both hands belong to God. He is holding what you entrusted to Him, and He is holding you while you hold what He entrusted to you. A woman who thinks she is the only thing between a room and a wobble cannot rest, and you were never the only thing.