I Snapped at the Self Checkout

Unexpected item in the bagging area. Three times.

The third time she said something out loud to the machine, and it was not a swear word, but it had that shape and that volume, and it landed in a quiet supermarket at four in the afternoon in front of a line of people and one member of staff who was nineteen and had done nothing wrong.

The nineteen year old came over and fixed it in about four seconds without saying anything, and that was worse.

She got her bag and went out to the car and sat in it. She is twenty seven. She sat there in the driver's seat with her shopping on the passenger side and did not start the engine for about six minutes.

Here is what she was thinking, and it was not about the machine.

She has known since she was about nine. There was a list on a wall in a Sunday class, in that bubble writing that people did, and it had nine things on it, and even at nine years old she went down it and knew exactly which one was not hers. Love, joy, peace, and then the next one, and she remembers reading it and feeling the floor tilt very slightly.

Eighteen years. She has read books about it. She has prayed about it in a general way, in the way you pray about a thing you have privately decided is your permanent handicap. She has had two people, both of whom love her, say something kind and true about how she has got better at it, and she has smiled and not believed either of them.

And this afternoon she shouted at a machine.

The light in a supermarket parking lot at four in the afternoon in autumn comes in almost horizontally, and it was in her eyes, and she sat there in it with her hands on the wheel and thought: this is just who I am, then.

You have your one. Everybody who has ever seen that list has one. And you have had it for years and you have quietly filed it as a fixed feature of yourself, and everybody who knows you well could name it too, which is the part nobody says out loud. There is a sentence in Colossians that says something about where that particular quality comes from, and it is not from a book about it.

Strengthened according to His power

I have to be careful here, and more careful than usual, because this is the exact place where somebody normally hands over a technique. Count to five. A daily exercise in patience. Try this in traffic for a month. I am not going to do that. Not one item on that list in bubble writing is described anywhere in Scripture as a skill, and handing a twenty seven year old a patience exercise would be giving her a nineteenth year of the same project.

Paul is praying for a church and here is what he asks for them: Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness (Colossians 1:11).

Read the direction of it. He does not tell them to work on patience. He asks God to strengthen them, with all might, according to His glorious power, and the patience is what that strengthening arrives as. The power is God's, the strengthening is God's, and patience is the form it takes in a person.

You have been trying to generate what Paul asked God to supply. That is not me softening the verse; Colossians 1:11 puts the might, the power and the strengthening all on God's side of the sentence, and the Holy Spirit who carried that prayer into the letter did not attach an exercise to it.

And notice the measure. According to his glorious power. Not according to how much you have left at four in the afternoon in a supermarket. The supply is not rationed against your current state, which is precisely why the state you are in has never been the obstacle you assumed it was.

Strengthened with all might, according to his glorious power, unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.Colossians 1:11

It is fruit and not equipment

Now the list on the wall, because the bubble writing has a lot to answer for.

Galatians 5:22 says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. Fruit of the Spirit. Not: nine qualities to develop. Not: the character checklist. The genitive in that phrase is doing all the work, and it says whose fruit it is.

A branch does not manufacture. Something appears on it because it is attached, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, which is not a criticism of branches, it is a description of how growing works.

You were never issued this as a task, and the eighteen years of failing at it were eighteen years of failing at somebody else's job. John 15:4 says the branch cannot do it of itself, and the Spirit is the one who does; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) has been the grower the entire time.

This is yours right now, in a car with the sun in your eyes: a quality that is supplied rather than achieved. Galatians 5:22 calls it the fruit of the Spirit, possessive and unambiguous; the Spirit who inspired that phrase named the source in the phrase itself.

What the shouting was actually about

Let me name the sentence in the car, because it is not about a machine and it is not about being a rude person.

It sounds like this: this is just who I am, then. Not I did a bad thing. A statement about the permanent shape of a person, arrived at in a parking lot, off the evidence of four seconds, and it is the same sentence she reached at nine in front of a list in bubble writing.

You were never described that way by the one who made you. Ephesians 2:10 says you are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, and a workmanship is a thing being made rather than a thing that has come out how it has come out; the Holy Spirit who carried that into the letter did not include a clause about permanent handicaps.

And the two people who love her and told her she had got better at it were probably right, and she has never been able to hear it, because a person running an eighteen year project cannot see growth in the project, only the current failure. That is not humility. That is the natural blindness of somebody standing too close.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. On the drive you already make, tell Him about one ordinary moment with nothing asked for and no self assessment attached. Not a review of how you did. One moment. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody scores that, and it will not be graded on Friday.