Forty Collars in a Row

Eleven minutes. He has timed it, in the way a man times a thing he is dreading, and it comes out at eleven minutes for about forty people, which is roughly sixteen seconds each and a hand every sixteen seconds.

He is third in the line. His sister is first because she is the mother of the bride and this is her hour and she is magnificent, radiant, unstoppable, hugging people she has not seen in fifteen years and remembering all their children's names. His brother in law is second and has already gone slightly pink. And then him, the uncle, who was asked to stand in the line because the family is short of grandparents now and somebody has to, and who said of course, because you say of course.

Here is what nobody in that hall can see. He is shaking forty hands and he is looking at forty collars.

Not the floor. He is not a man who stares at the floor; he would notice himself doing it, and so would his sister. It is subtler than that and it has taken years to perfect. The eyes go to the collar, or the knot of the tie, or somewhere around the third button, and the smile does its work, and the voice says congratulations and doesn't she look wonderful, and the hand is warm and firm, and every single person coming through that line feels welcomed by him. He is good at this. He is genuinely, warmly good at this. And in eleven minutes he does not meet one pair of eyes.

If something in you just went quiet, come and sit with me, and let me say plainly who I am speaking to today. Not the one carrying a thing that another person did to them. That message exists on this site, it is written for you, and it does not use a single word of what follows. Today I am speaking to the one who did something, years back, and took it to God straight and whole, and meant it, and who has been aiming his eyes at collars ever since.

Two wounds arrived together and only one got treated

Guilt says: I did something wrong. Shame says: I am something wrong.

They come through the door at the same moment and they speak in the same voice, so nobody separates them for you, and that is exactly why an honest man can confess a thing properly and find that the weight has not shifted an ounce.

Confession is the right medicine for guilt. It is real, it works, and it worked for you. The account closed. You would say so out loud at that wedding with a glass in your hand and you would be telling the truth.

But shame is not a verdict about an act. It is a verdict about a person, which is why every hour you have spent going back over the act has changed nothing at all, and why somewhere around the fourth year you began to suspect that the fault was in you. It was not. Nobody told you there were two injuries. That belongs to those of us who teach, and I take my share of it.

You are cleared of every count that was ever brought against you, and you are not the count. That is not my kindness talking. It is written that there is now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the force of my sentence, who takes a settled verdict down into a chest that has been braced for a decade.

For the Lord GOD will help me; therefore shall I not be confounded: therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed.Isaiah 50:7

Now, flint. In my grandmother's kitchen there was a stone she kept for sharpening, and flint is that kind of stone: hard, yes, but the point of flint is not hardness. The point of flint is that it holds an edge and it keeps a direction. A face set like flint is not a face gone cold. It is a face that has been aimed.

And look who is speaking. That is the Servant, and the Servant is Christ, and He says it walking toward the worst hours of His life. He does not say I feel no shame. He says I know that I shall not be ashamed, and the reason He gives is the Lord God will help me. The face is aimed at the Father, and the aiming is what settles it.

You have a face that has been set on Someone, and you have it because His was set first. Scripture puts the reason in front of the resolve, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a doctrine a man already agrees with into a neck that actually moves.

Your eyes have a direction, not a defect

Here is the mercy in this. Nothing is wrong with your eyes.

They went somewhere. Twelve or fifteen years ago, in a season nobody but you and God knows about, your eyes learned a new address, and they have been going there faithfully ever since, and they will keep going there until they are given a different one. That is not a character flaw. That is an aim.

Which is why arguing with yourself in a hallway before a wedding has never worked, not once, and you have tried it a hundred times. A direction cannot be argued with. It can only be reset, and the resetting is done by looking at Someone.

You are being turned toward a face that has never once turned away from you, and you were turned toward it before you felt a single thing. The word says we all with open face beholding the glory of the Lord are changed into the same image, and it names His Spirit as the one doing the changing, which means the work in you was never yours to manufacture tonight.