The Pause Beside the Bus Timetable

For the one who apologizes for a pause that cost nobody anything.

When did a pause become something you owed an apology for?

You're standing at the shelter reading the timetable on the board, which you've read twice already, because the 47 is nine minutes away and there's nothing else to do with your eyes.

A woman you know slightly from the school run is standing beside you. You've already talked about the roadworks and about the state of the pavement outside the chemist, and all of it has been easy. Then she asks, in the pleasant way people do, whether you've found somewhere to worship since you moved across town.

And you don't answer. Not immediately. There's a gap of perhaps three seconds in which you look at the board and she looks at you. Then you say sorry, and then you produce something that will do.

The sorry is the part worth examining. You apologized. For a pause. To a woman at a bus stop who had all the time in the world and a bus that was still nine minutes out.

Your silence beside that timetable was not an admission, and no penalty attaches to a pause. Scripture that there is now no condemnation, and the Spirit keeps no tally of the moments when you stop speaking.

What You Think a Pause Means

Take apart what you believe about silence, because you've clearly got a theory and you've never said it out loud.

You believe a pause is a confession. That the three seconds of nothing said the guilty part, and that whatever you produced afterwards was already too late to undo it.

That's why the sorry came out. Sorry is what a person says when they have done something, and in your accounting the pause was the thing you had done. You were apologizing for having been slow, which you had already read as having been caught out.

That reading happened faster than thought. Nobody decides in three seconds that a silence is an admission of guilt, which tells you the decision was made a long time ago and was simply being applied.

Nobody at that bus stop read it that way. A woman asked a question and the person beside her took a moment. That happens perhaps forty times a day to everybody, and it means nothing at all.

You apologized for a pause because you'd already read it as a confession. The written word says no condemnation stands over you, and the Spirit holds none of your hesitations against you.

No Condemnation, Including for the Gap

Here's the verse, and it's worth applying it to the specific three seconds rather than to your life in general.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.Romans 8:1 (KJV)

No condemnation. That covers the pause. It covers the sorry, the answer you gave afterwards, the better answer you thought of on the bus, and the version you'll still be rehearsing at eleven o'clock tonight.

Paul is not describing a reduced sentence for people who hesitate at bus stops. He's describing an absence of sentence, with nothing held back and nothing filed for later review.

Paul said that to believers in Rome who lived under constant assessment by everybody around them, and it reaches past that crowd to a shelter with a timetable on the wall.

There's no sentence waiting for you, which includes the three seconds. The written word states it as an absence rather than a reduction, and the Spirit has never once held a pause against you.

Silence Is an Answer

Here's a thought you've never permitted yourself, and it's worth sitting with for a moment.

You are allowed to say nothing at all. Not as a failure to produce something better, but as a complete and honest response that you chose deliberately and would choose again. A shrug and a small smile is a whole reply. So is saying that it's a long story and then talking about the roadworks again.

That isn't evasion and it isn't dishonest. It's a decision about how much of your interior life you are handing to a woman you know from the school run, and you are entitled to make that decision yourself.

The measure of what somebody is owed is the relationship rather than the question. A question does not carry its own authority. The person asking it has a place in your life, and that place is what sets the size of the answer.

People do this constantly about money, health, and their marriages. Nobody thinks it is a moral failing to keep a difficult matter to yourself at a bus stop, and you have made an exception for this one subject alone.

Ask yourself why this one. The honest answer is probably that somewhere along the way you absorbed the idea that a believer owes an account of their spiritual condition to anybody who enquires. Nobody ever taught you that out loud, and it is not written down anywhere.

Saying nothing is a complete answer rather than a failed one. The written word leaves you free here, and the Spirit gives you the words when words are the right thing.

I Am Not Telling You to Go Quiet

Be careful, because this could turn into a rule and it isn't one.

There'll be people you should tell, and telling them properly will be one of the better decisions you make this year. A friend, a brother, somebody who has earned the long version. Say it to them. Say all of it.

Nor am I telling you the woman was intruding. She wasn't. It was a kind question asked by somebody making conversation, and she's asked three other people the same thing this month.

What I want off you is the apology. Not the courtesy. Not the care about answering people well.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Nova This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.