Nearly everybody goes inside on that crossing, because it is early and there is a cafe and there are seats, and so the open deck at the stern belongs to about four people and a great many gulls.
The coast goes from a thing you can see the windows of to a shape, and then to a gray line, and then to a suggestion, and the whole of that takes about thirty-five minutes and there is no exact moment when it is gone.
She does this crossing most weeks. It is work, and it is ordinary, and she has a spot at the rail on the port side out of the wind, and a flask, and a coat that is genuinely too warm for the cafe and exactly right out here.
She used to pray on this deck.
Every crossing, for years, in the way a person talks to somebody who happens to be standing next to them at a rail. Not a system. Just company.
And it stopped about two years ago, on the day she read a verse properly.
She had known the verse for a long time. The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth. And that morning her eye caught on the last two words, and something in her went cold, because she read them as a requirement, and she took them to mean that a person calling on God must lay the whole of it out, all of it, and that anything less is not calling in truth.
What she carries belongs to what another person did to her. She is not going to lay it out. And so she stopped calling.
Let me say who I am speaking to. Today I am speaking to you, the one carrying what somebody else did. I am not going to ask you what it was, and nothing here wants the thing itself.
And I will say this straight before anything else: that is not what that verse says, and I am going to show you why.
The word is about you, not about the contents
Here is the verse whole.
The LORD is nigh unto all them that call upon him, to all that call upon him in truth.Psalm 145:18
The word behind in truth is emet, and it is one of the great words in the Hebrew Bible, and it does not mean completeness of disclosure.
It means firmness. Reliability. Faithfulness. It is used of God Himself constantly, and when it is used of a person it means that the person is genuinely doing what they appear to be doing rather than performing it.
So calling on God in truth means calling on Him and meaning it. Actually meaning it. As opposed to saying the words while thinking about something else, or saying them because somebody is watching, or saying them as a formula.
It is a word about the caller, not about the contents of the call.
And read the first half of the verse before you take the second: all them that call upon him. All. He is not narrowing the field in the second clause. He is describing what a real call is, and a real call is one a person means.
You are near to God every time you actually mean it, and you were never required to hand over the contents. I am not being generous with the text. The written word uses a word about firmness rather than a word about fullness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it out onto a deck at the stern of a ferry.
Two years is a long time on a wrong reading
Now let me name what happened, and I want to name it plainly, because it needs saying before anything lifts.
Two years ago you were reading your Bible, honestly, wanting to get it right, and you read one phrase in a way that shut a door. And then you kept the door shut faithfully for two years, out of exactly the same honesty.
That is not a failure. That is what a serious person does with what they think a text requires, and it is a great deal better than the alternative.
But it was a wrong reading, and I have no interest in softening how much it has cost you. Two years of crossings, at a rail, in a coat that is right for the weather, with nothing said.
You are held by a God who has been standing at that rail through both years, and you were never once out of His company because of a phrase. Scripture puts His nearness in the first half of that verse and does not withdraw it in the second, and it is His Spirit, not a better reading, who has been keeping company with a woman who thought she had been excluded.
So here is the ask, and it is one sentence long.
Pray one sentence today. Out loud. About anything at all.
The gulls. The gray line where the coast was. Thank you for the coat being right, if that is true. Anything ordinary and anything you mean.
And do not mention the thing in it. Not as avoidance and not as a technique. Because it was never the requirement, and in truth was never about the contents.
There is no second stage. If you never put that matter into words with God for the rest of your life, He has held every part of it since before it happened, and nearness has never once depended on a person telling Him what He already sees.
And I will say one thing straight, because a page is not always the help a person needs. If what was done to you is still happening, or if today feels frightening, reach for a person rather than a page. In the United States you can call or text 988 at any hour and a real person answers. In the United Kingdom, 116 123. Anywhere else, the emergency number where you live or a national line. You never have to describe anything to anybody in order to ask for help staying.
You are called near by God every time you mean it, and you were meaning it on every crossing you stood silent through. That is what the written word settles in Psalm 145, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying it off a page and out onto an open deck at the stern.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that is the ground under every word coming next. This is not a feeling being worked up. It is agreement out loud with what one Hebrew word actually means, and how this crossing goes, and how the winter goes, the outcome is His. The written word is what settled it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it.
- Coast going gray behind the rail, you are a headland and a light and a place I am leaving for the day. You never once measured a distance between me and God. The written word says He is nigh to all who call, and I am talking out here again.
- Reading of the words in truth, you turned a word about meaning it into a word about telling all of it, and I set you down in the name of Jesus. It was not mine and it never wrote my name. Emet is about the caller and never about the contents.
- Lord, You are near to everyone who calls and You did not narrow it in the second half. I am saying one sentence out loud into the wind today and meaning it. And You have stood at this rail through both of the silent years.
Psalm 145:18
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