The Ribbon Is Still in Luke

For the reader whose Bible shut fourteen months ago and nobody noticed.

How long have you been waiting for somebody to say something about it?

Not consciously. You'd deny it if anybody asked, and you'd be telling the truth as far as you know it. But some part of you has been waiting fourteen months for a person to ask how the reading's going.

The Tuesday group ended in July of the year before last. Twelve of you, six years, a room above a shop with a heater that never worked properly. It didn't collapse and nobody fell out. The woman whose house it moved to had a baby, then it was August, and then it simply didn't start again.

Everybody said they'd keep in touch. Four of you managed it for a while. You still see two of them at the occasions that bring people together.

Neither has mentioned the group in about a year. Neither has stopped being glad to see you, which you notice every time and have never once let yourself count.

In fourteen months, not one person has asked what you're reading. Not unkindly. It simply hasn't come up, because there's no longer a Tuesday for it to come up on.

Your Father seeth in secret, and being unnoticed has never once meant being unseen. The Word says that that phrase down about the room with nobody in it, and the Spirit makes that seeing real when nobody on earth is asking.

The Question Was Doing More Than You Knew

It was such a small thing. Somebody would ask, most weeks, in the first ten minutes, before the heater gave up entirely.

What that question did was tell you that you were being thought about between Tuesdays. Somebody had you in mind. Your reading existed in another person's head as well as in your own kitchen, and that made it feel like a real object in the world.

When the question stopped, the reading lost that. It became something happening in one place only, known by you alone, and a thing known only by you can start to feel like a thing that isn't happening.

That isn't vanity. It's how people are built. We're made for one another, and losing the part of your life that lived in other people's heads is a genuine loss rather than a character flaw.

You lost a witness and you didn't lose a watcher, because a Father in secret was always the one seeing. Scripture's instruction as written promises He sees in secret rather than through anybody's Tuesday, and the Spirit keeps that true through fourteen months.

Seeing in Secret

Here's the verse, and the word worth staying on is the one about seeing.

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.Matthew 6:6 (KJV)

Thy Father which seeth in secret. Not who will find out later, not who is told about it afterwards by somebody. He sees in the secret place, which means the shut room isn't a blind spot and never was one.

Jesus is speaking to people who had an audience and were enjoying it, and He removes the audience. He doesn't replace it with a smaller one. He points out that the room they thought was empty has God in it.

Those words were first spoken to a crowd on a hillside, most of whom had no private room at all, and they arrive in a kitchen at seven in the morning without narrowing.

You are seen in the room where nobody asks, because He sees in secret by nature. The written Word's instruction as written says the Father seeth in secret, and the Spirit makes that a present fact in your kitchen.

Fourteen Months of Being Thought About

Say something warm that also happens to be exactly true.

You have been assuming that because nobody asked, nobody was thinking of you. Be careful with that. Somebody in that group has prayed for you by name more than once in fourteen months and has never mentioned it, because people don't.

You'd be amazed how many people are being held by somebody who has never said so. It's one of the quietest facts about how God's people actually behave, and almost nobody finds out about it in their own lifetime.

The arithmetic runs both ways, which is the part worth sitting with. You are almost certainly on somebody's list yourself, for a reason you have forgotten and an occasion you would not recognize if it were described to you.

But I won't build your comfort on a guess about somebody else. The verse doesn't need it. The Father sees, the seeing hasn't paused, and that stands whether or not one person from that room ever says your name again.

You're held by a seeing that never paused, whatever anybody on earth did or didn't say. Scripture's instruction as written puts the seeing in God rather than in a group, and the Spirit makes it current after fourteen months.

I Am Not Restarting the Tuesday Group

Be plain about the ending this refuses to write, because it's the obvious one.

I'm not telling you to ring the four people and get it going again. If that happens and it's good, I'll be glad. It may well be the right thing, it may equally not be, and this doesn't need it either way.

Nor am I telling you to read daily to make up for the fourteen months. There's no plan in this and there isn't going to be one. The place you came out of measured you, and a measure in a kinder voice is still a measure.

What I want lifted is the sense that unwitnessed means unreal. Not the ribbon. Not the group.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

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