Bucky came back on his own once. Once, in my whole life, and I was there for it and I have told it to about four people who did not believe me.
He had been out since about eleven in the morning and it was one of the long ones. Dad had been out twice. I had been out once with him and once on my own up as far as the elder, which is as far as I am allowed on my own, and by half past five we had run out of places and Dad had come in and was standing at the stove not really doing anything to a pan.
And at about six I looked out of the kitchen window and he was at the gate of his own pen.
Not near it. At it. Standing with his head over the top bar of the gate of the pen he had let himself out of seven hours before, waiting for somebody to come and open the gate of the pen, which he could have got back into himself in about four seconds if he had wanted to.
I said his name. I did not say anything else. And Dad came and looked over my shoulder out the window and put his hand on the back of my head, and then he went out and let him in.
Here is the whole thing, and it is the reason I am telling it. Nobody said anything. Not one thing. Dad came back in and washed his hands and went back to the pan, and about two minutes later he started singing, which he does not do, and it was not a hymn and it was not anything, it was just a noise a man makes at a stove when he is all right again.
I have thought about that a lot. Seven hours. Two trips out. And what happened when the trouble ended was singing at a stove and nothing else at all.
The two halves of the same verse
There is one sentence near the end of a short and mostly severe book, and it does something people do not expect.
The LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save: he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17)
Read the two things He does with sound. He will rest in his love, which older readings render as being quiet, silent, holding His peace. And he will joy over thee with singing, which is the opposite of quiet.
So He is silent about one thing and loud about another, and the whole comfort of the verse is in which is which.
You are met with quiet where you expected a list, and Zephaniah 3:17 puts the silence exactly there. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as mercy rather than as a delay before the real conversation.
There is a particular thing that happens on the way back. A person who has gone off, in any of the ways people go off, spends the whole journey home writing the other side of the conversation. It is often better written than anything the other person would actually have said.
You have been walking home composing something nobody was ever going to deliver. The written word says He will rest in His love, and His Spirit is what gets a sentence like that in ahead of the one a person has been drafting.
What the singing is about
The other half of that verse is stranger and larger, and children take it much better than adults do.
He will joy over thee with singing. Not He will be pleased. Not He will accept you back. He will sing, and the preposition matters: over you, which is what somebody does standing above a thing they are glad about.
That is a picture almost nobody carries around. People will accept that God forgives. Very few people will accept that God is delighted, out loud, in a way that makes a noise.
You are somebody God makes a sound about. Zephaniah 3:17 uses singing rather than approval, and the Spirit of God is what makes the difference between believing you are permitted and believing you are enjoyed.
And the whole sentence starts with the LORD thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, which means none of this is soft. The one doing the singing is the one described in the same breath as mighty and as the one who saves.
You have not been welcomed back by somebody who had to lower a standard to do it. Zephaniah 3:17 keeps mighty and singing in one verse without apologizing for either, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that into a kitchen where somebody has started making a noise at a stove.
So here is the thing about a goat standing at his own gate at six in the evening.
You are not walking toward the speech, and Zephaniah 3:17 puts the quiet exactly where the speech was supposed to go. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a nice idea and makes it the reason a man goes back to a pan.
He could have got in himself. That is the part I keep. Four seconds. He had let himself out of that pen at eleven in the morning and he stood at it at six in the evening waiting for somebody to come, and I do not know what that means about a goat and I am not going to pretend I do.
You have somebody who is glad out loud when you come back, and Scripture says He sings about it. Zephaniah 3:17 uses singing rather than acceptance, and His Spirit is what makes being enjoyed something a person can actually take in rather than only agree with.
And this is for the one doing the reading tonight, who has been on both sides of it and knows which one is harder. You were never met at the door with a list. Zephaniah 3:17 says He will rest in His love, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that silence louder than the speech anybody had prepared.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over the speech you have been bracing for is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God is described as quiet in His love and loud in His singing, so speak to the dread: you have standing to address it because He is the one who set which is which. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Zephaniah 3:17 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Speech I am braced for, you are not what is waiting in this kitchen. The Word of God says the LORD my God in the midst of me is mighty, and then puts rest in His love exactly where I had put a reckoning.
- Habit of writing both sides, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am received and I am enjoyed, because Zephaniah 3:17 uses a word about singing over somebody rather than a word about permitting them.
- Father, You have never once met me at the door with a list. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word puts mighty and singing in the same sentence and does not apologize for either one.
Zephaniah 3:17
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