For the one in the chair choosing between two bad options that do not exist.
Which is actually worse for you, the silence or the explaining?
You're in the chair with a gown clipped at the back of your neck and your hair still wet. She has the scissors up. She's just asked whether you go to the church on the corner, because she's seen you walking that way.
The scissors stop. That's the detail worth keeping hold of. They stop, about two inches from your ear, and they stay stopped for as long as it takes you to decide.
Option one is silence, which will last as long as you let it and will be audible in a room with four people in it. Option two is explaining, which means the next eleven minutes of this haircut are about the hardest four years of your life, with a woman you like and see twice a year.
Both of those cost something and you can feel the price of each of them while the scissors are up. That is why the pause happened, and it is a reasonable pause given the two options you were holding.
You choose explaining. It goes on for a while. She's lovely about it, the haircut is fine, and you tip more than usual for reasons you couldn't defend to anybody.
Nothing on Paul's list can separate you from the love of God, and a silence in a chair is not on it. The written word names everything that cannot separate you, and the Spirit is the one holding you inside that love.
Neither Option Was Ever Required
Look at the two doors you were choosing between, because a third one was standing open the whole time.
Silence, or the full account. Those were your options, and you have been running that same pair for four years at counters, at school gates, and now in a chair with a gown on.
The third door is a short true answer. Not silence, not eleven minutes. Something like this: not at the moment, it has been a strange few years, and then a question about her holiday. Nine seconds, entirely true, and it hands the conversation back.
You've never used it. Not once in four years. You've been choosing between two extremes so consistently that you've stopped noticing the ordinary middle that everybody else uses about everything else in their lives.
People do it about money, about their health, about how their marriage is going. Fine, thanks. Bit of a year, actually. Nobody considers those answers evasive, because everybody understands that a short answer at a counter is what a counter is for.
A short true answer is the door you have never once tried. The written word frees you from both extremes, and the Spirit gives the words at the moment they are needed.
Nothing Shall Separate
Here is the passage, and what matters is how exhaustive Paul is being.
For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.Romans 8:38-39 (KJV)
He goes through everything. Death, life, angels, powers, the present, the future, height, depth, and then, in case anything was missed, any other creature at all.
That list is built to be complete. It's Paul making sure there's no gap left where somebody could file their own particular fear, and a bad answer in a chair doesn't qualify, because nothing at all qualifies.
Paul wrote that to believers who were genuinely afraid of losing what they had been given, and it carries over to a woman with a gown clipped at her neck without being stretched.
Paul left no gap on that list, and your haircut is not the exception. The written word says nothing can separate you, and the Spirit is the one keeping you there.
What the Eleven Minutes Cost
Be practical, because the cost is real and you paid it without counting.
Eleven minutes of your own hardest years, said out loud, while you can't move your head. You couldn't look away, you couldn't leave, and you could see your own face in the mirror the whole time you were saying it.
She paid something too. She had to be careful with the scissors while being kind about something heavy, and she did both well, and she will think about it this evening.
And you tipped extra. That is the tell. You paid her for having had to receive it, which is what a person does when they believe they have imposed. You did impose, slightly, and none of it was necessary, because a third door was standing open the whole time.
You paid extra because you knew you had handed her something she never asked for. The written word frees you from that obligation, and the Spirit does not require it of you either.
I Am Not Telling You That You Were Wrong
Be clear, because this is not a rebuke and it must not land as one.
You were not wrong to tell her. It was true, she was kind, and telling the truth about a hard thing to somebody safe is not a fault. If you do exactly the same thing next time, nothing is broken.
Nor am I telling you the silence would have been better. It would not have been. Silence in a small room with four people in it has a weight of its own, and you were right that both of those doors cost something.
What I want off you is the pair. Not the honesty. Not the warmth toward her.
The Scissors Started Again
Here is the turn, and it is in a sound rather than a sentence.
The scissors stopped. Then, after you answered, they started again. That is the whole shape of what happened in that room, and it took about fourteen seconds.
They were always going to start again. Whatever you said, whatever you left out, however long the silence, that woman was going to cut your hair and you were going to walk out into the afternoon with a better haircut than you went in with.
Nothing was hanging on your answer. Not the haircut, not her opinion of you, not your standing with God. The pause in a pair of scissors was four seconds of a Tuesday, and you have been treating it as a threshold.
The scissors were always going to start again, whatever you said. The written word says nothing can separate you from the love of God, and the Spirit held you the whole fourteen seconds.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
You did not earn the right to say this. It arrived with Christ, who lives in you, and the Spirit carries it back to God as agreement rather than as a demand. What comes next is His to arrange.
Read it out once and let the last line finish.
Nothing on Paul's list can separate me from the love of God, and a silence in a chair is not on it. Scripture stands written, that neither death nor life, nor the present nor what is coming, nor height nor depth nor any other creature can separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus, and he built that list to leave no gap in it. The Spirit holds me inside it. I am not choosing between silence and a speech. The scissors were always going to start again, whatever I said, and they did. Nothing here separates me from Him, and I stop arguing with it.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Romans 8:38-39
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
