Snapping Beans in the Last of the Light

The beans came in warm off the row and she has the bowl on her knees on the porch step, snapping the ends off two at a time, the way her mother did it and her mother's mother before that.

The light is going. It leaves a hollow the way it always has, off the far field first, then the fence line, then the yard, and the last of it lies along the top rail like it is thinking about staying.

Behind her the screen door is propped and the kitchen is talking to itself, a pot lid, a tap, somebody's program turned down low. Two houses over a dog starts up at the hour he always starts up.

She has snapped beans on this step her whole life. Her grandmother said grace over a bowl like this one with her thumbnail still green from the row. Her mother hummed while she worked and did not always know she was humming.

And it comes to her, with her thumb on a bean, that she has not said anything to God out here in a long while. Not out here. Not at the sink either, not about anything that was not an emergency, and she could not put a date on it if somebody made her try.

There was no falling out. There is nothing to point at. She could tell you the whole of what she believes and not stumble over a word of it, and every bit of it is still true, and she has been quiet.

She snaps the last one and sets the bowl down on the boards. The light is off the rail now. It is off the fence. It is going up the hill the way it goes.

You are the one on the step with the bowl. You believe every word of it. And the quiet came on you the way evening comes down a hollow, with no decision anywhere in it, and now you feel you would need some occasion before you could speak, and there is never going to be one.

Light goes off a hollow one field at a time

I have watched evening come down a hollow more times than I could count, and the thing about it is that nobody ever catches it happening. There is no moment. The far field goes first and it does not register, because the yard is still bright. Then the fence goes and the print on the page is still just readable. Then a person looks up and the whole place has gone blue and cool and could not say when.

That is what happened to the coming near. It was not a door slammed and it was not a decision taken on a bad night. It was a season with a great deal in it, then a week that got away, and by then it had gone off the far field, and the belief stayed exactly where it had always been the entire time, bright as a rail in the sun.

So let me say the first thing plainly, because you have been carrying its opposite around all evening. You are not sitting at the end of a decision you made. There is no decision. There is no charge sheet being read anywhere. Scripture puts the drawing in this business squarely on God's side of the porch, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has stirred up this small restlessness in you tonight, which is a hand on the shoulder and not a verdict.

He was drawing the whole while

Here is the verse I want in your hands, and it is not the one people usually reach for when they talk about somebody coming home.

Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.Jeremiah 31:3

Take the order of that sentence, because the order is the whole gift. The love comes first, and it is everlasting, which means it has no beginning you could go looking for and no evening when it slid off the far field. Then comes the therefore. Because the love is everlasting, the drawing happened. God is not sitting up tonight deciding whether He wants you near. The wanting is older than the quiet, and the quiet never once interrupted it.

Drawn is a working word in the Hebrew. It is the word for hauling something along, the word you would use for a rope on a well bucket or a man pulled up out of a pit. It is not a wave from a porch. It is a pull, and it has been on you.

You have been drawn, and you are being drawn tonight, and the pull you have felt is not your own homesickness in a borrowed coat. That is not my opinion of your evening. It is written in Jeremiah 31, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an old line breathe in a woman on a step with a bowl of beans, and He has had hold of the other end of that rope the whole while you thought nothing at all was happening.

And notice what the verse never asks for. There is no interview in it. Nowhere does the drawing wait on an account of how the field went dark. Lovingkindness is the reason given, it is the only reason given, and it is His to supply and never was yours.

The step is not far from the door

Now the part that takes the size out of this.

The quiet took a long time because it was made out of evenings. Coming near does not take a long time, because it is not made out of anything. It is not a road. A woman on a porch step is already at her own door. She is four feet from the kitchen and she was four feet from it the whole time she sat there feeling like a visitor. The measuring is the only long part of this, and I would like you to set the tape measure down.

Here is how short it actually is. One sentence, out loud, with nothing behind it. Not a summary. Not a reckoning of the seasons. One sentence, and the reason you do not owe Him more than that is that He has not asked for more than that. In the story Jesus told, the father never let the speech get finished, and the servants were running for the robe while the words were still lined up in the son's mouth.

You have a way in tonight that does not run through an explanation, and it is open now, not once you have found the right words for it. His word puts the drawing on His side and the speaking on yours, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying you over four feet of porch boards. That is the whole of what stands between you and saying something to God.