They Smile and Change the Subject

Three times, and she counted, which tells you something about how it landed.

The first was in April, in a small group, when she said what she thought was happening with a family everybody was praying for. She was specific. She was not dramatic; she has never in her life been dramatic. The woman leading it said something warm and moved on to the next item within about nine seconds.

The second was in June, to a man of forty who had asked her opinion, and who nodded a great deal while she spoke and then said, gently, that it was so lovely to hear the older generation's perspective.

The third was three weeks ago and was the one that stopped her, and it was not even unkind. Somebody smiled. That is all. Somebody smiled at her, warmly, the way you smile at a grandmother who has said something charming, and then asked whether anybody had heard about the parking.

She is seventy four. She has been reading her Bible since she was nineteen and she has been right about things, quietly, for fifty five years, and there are four people in that room who are only in that room because of a conversation with her that they have never mentioned to anybody.

And she has not said anything since. Not in April's sense. She talks, she is warm, she asks after people. But the thing that used to happen, where she would say the specific thing, has not happened since the third smile, and it is the first time in fifty five years that she has gone quiet on purpose.

She sat in the car after that meeting and did not put the radio on.

The hall is a good hall and the people in it are good people, and there is nobody in this story who has done anything you could name as wrong, and that is precisely the problem.

There is a sentence in Acts, in the first sermon anybody ever preached, and it has old men in it.

Your old men shall dream dreams

I have to be careful here, and considerably more careful than usual, because this is where somebody normally promises. God will give you a platform. They will come to you. Your time is coming. I am not going to say any of it. Nobody talking to a woman of seventy four about God has been authorized to forecast a hearing, and a promised one that does not arrive would cost her the last of something she has almost run out of.

Peter stands up on the first day and quotes Joel, and here is what he says: And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams (Acts 2:17).

Read the list. Sons and daughters. Young men. Old men. It is deliberately comprehensive, and the whole point of the sentence is that the pouring out does not sort people.

And read what the old men get. Dreams. Not honorable retirement, not a warm word, not thanks for their service. Dreams, which in that sentence sits parallel to visions and to prophesying, which is to say: the same order of thing as everybody else in the list.

You have not been given a smaller portion on account of your years. That is not me stretching the passage; Acts 2:17 names old men inside the outpouring and gives them dreams in the same breath as it gives the young men visions, and the Holy Spirit who is the subject of that verse did not grade anybody by decade.

And notice the first phrase: upon all flesh. Peter's whole argument is that the thing which has just happened has broken every category people were sorting each other into.

And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.Acts 2:17

The smile is not a verdict, and it is still doing work

Now the thing that has actually happened, because nobody in that hall did anything wrong.

Nobody dismissed her. Somebody smiled. A man of forty used a phrase he thought was respectful. A group moved to the next item because groups move to the next item.

And a woman who has been speaking for fifty five years stopped, and she stopped on the accumulated evidence of three small kindnesses, and every one of them would be astonished to hear it.

That is how it happens. It is almost never a refusal. It is a smile, three times.

You have never been silenced by anybody with the authority to do it. Acts 2:17 is what God poured out and it did not come with a category list; the same Spirit who bears witness that you are His (Romans 8:16) has not withdrawn anything from a woman of seventy four.

This is yours right now, sitting in a car with the radio off: a portion of the same outpouring everybody else in that room is standing in. Acts 2:17 says all flesh and then names old men specifically; the Spirit who is the subject of that sentence did not exclude a decade from it.

Fifty five years is the evidence

Let me put something on the other side of the ledger, because she has only counted three things.

Fifty five years of reading. Four people in that room who are there because of a conversation with her. And, this is the part she never counts, she has been right, quietly, repeatedly, in a way that nobody has ever had to make a fuss about because she has never made a fuss about it.

A woman with that record has stopped speaking on the evidence of three smiles, and if she showed that ledger to any reasonable person they would tell her that three does not outweigh fifty five.

You were never a person whose track record was three incidents long. 1 Corinthians 14:29 says let the prophets speak two or three, and let the other judge, which puts the weighing in the room's hands and the speaking in hers; the Holy Spirit who inspired that instruction gave the speaking to the one who has something to say.

Fruit is not output, and a small group is where it shows. Output would be a platform, a hearing, a moment where somebody says she was right. Fruit is what has grown on a woman who kept reading for fifty five years, and John 15:4 says the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, and it does not say the branch is called on.

So what does staying attached look like this week, since nobody is getting a program from me. One thing. On the walk to the hall you take anyway, tell Him one true thing about the three smiles with nothing asked for and no hearing wanted. Then be quiet long enough for Him to have the last word. Nobody grades that.