Look at the Green Light

The booth is between the trolley bay and a machine that turns coins into vouchers, and the curtain does not close properly on the left hand side, which is a detail he has now had a great deal of time to consider.

Four attempts. The first one the stool was too low and the top of his head was cut off. The second one he blinked. The third one, the little voice from the speaker said please look at the green light and do not smile, and he looked at the green light, and then his eyes went, without asking him, half an inch down and to the left, to the small live picture of his own face on the screen, and stayed there, and the flash went off while he was still looking at it. The fourth one he got right by staring at the green light so hard that the print, when it slid out warm into the metal tray, shows a man who looks like he is being asked a question by the police.

He does not look at the strip. He knows this about himself. He takes it out of the tray and folds it once and puts it in his wallet with the pictures facing in, and he goes and buys bread and a bag of oranges and drives home, and if you asked him about his afternoon he would say he sorted the passport thing out at last, and that would be the whole and honest truth of it.

Nobody in that supermarket knows a single thing about him. That is not the problem. The problem is a small screen and half an inch, and the way his eyes came off his own face like a hand comes off something hot. And if you read that and something in your chest went still, come and sit down, because I want to talk to you and not around you. Not to the one carrying what another person did to them; that is a different message and it needs different words, and it is on this site, and it is written for you too. Today I am talking to the one who did something. Who took it to God, properly, and meant it. And who still cannot be looked at.

The invitation came first

In my grandmother's house nobody was ever asked why they had come. The door was open, the tray came out, there was bread and there was honey and there were dates on a small dish, and the asking was considered a kind of insult. You came, therefore you were expected. That was the whole arrangement.

I tell you that because there is a line in the Psalms that most people read backwards, and reading it backwards is what has kept some very sincere believers with their eyes on the tablecloth for twenty years.

When thou saidst, Seek ye my face; my heart said unto thee, Thy face, LORD, will I seek.Psalm 27:8

Read the order. God speaks first. Seek ye my face. The looking up is not a thing the man thought of and hoped would be allowed. It is a thing God asked for, out loud, and the man is simply saying yes to an invitation that was already in the room.

Which means the whole of your difficulty this afternoon is not whether you are permitted. You are welcome at that table right now, and you were welcome before you ever folded a photograph face down. I am not offering you my own warm opinion there. Scripture puts the invitation in God's mouth before it puts the answer in the man's, and it is the Holy Spirit, not the paragraph you are reading, who carries an invitation across the distance a person has put between themselves and a room.

Now here is what shame actually does, and it is worth naming precisely, because it is cleverer than most people give it credit for.

Shame very rarely tells a man he is not invited. It is too shrewd for that; he would argue, and he would win, because he has the invitation in writing. So it does something quieter. It lets him come, and sit, and eat, and it simply keeps his eyes down for the whole meal, and it calls that humility. A guest who will not lift his face is not being modest. He is grieving a host who set the table for him.

You have been given a place at that table, and you have it as a gift, and no guest ever earned a place by keeping his eyes on his hands. That is what the written word settles, and His Spirit is the one who makes a welcome feel like a welcome and not like a technicality.

Guilt takes confession. Shame takes a face.

There are two different injuries here and they are treated in two different ways, and almost nobody is told this, so honest people conclude the medicine failed.

Guilt says: I did something wrong. That has a remedy, and the remedy is confession, and it worked. The account is closed. You would say so out loud and you would be right.

Shame says something else entirely: I am something wrong. That is not a verdict about an act, so no amount of confessing an act ever touches it. You have been going back to the same well for years and coming up dry, and you started to think the dryness was evidence about you. It is not. It is evidence that you were carrying the wrong bucket, and I am the one who should have told you sooner.

The remedy for shame is a face. Not yours. His. They looked to Him, and were radiant, and their faces were not ashamed, and notice that nothing in that sentence is about their nerve or their readiness. They looked. Something happened in their faces that they did not do.

You are looked at by God right now with nothing held back and nothing withheld, and you were looked at like that on the worst day you have ever had. Scripture says He is faithful and just to forgive, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that from a doctrine you agree with into a room where you can breathe.