He Went Through the Creek and I Went In After Him

There is a place on the creek at the bottom of the wood where the bank drops away and the bed is loose stone, and every man who has farmed this place has told his son not to cross there.

My father told me. I have told Toby. It is not deep and it is not fast, and the reason nobody crosses there is that the bottom moves under you and you go down on your side in about a foot of water, which is not dangerous and is extremely undignified and is a long way from the house in February.

Bucky crossed there on a Sunday afternoon in October.

He did not have a reason. He never has a reason. He went across at a walk with the water up round him and he went straight up the far bank into the neighbor's rough ground, which runs to about eleven acres of bramble and old sycamore and is the single worst place on this farm to be looking for anything.

I stood on the near bank for a good long while.

I would like to record that I considered the options. The options were: cross there, walk half a mile up to the plank bridge and half a mile back down the other side, or leave him until morning and see what happened.

I crossed there. I went down on my side, as advertised, and got up wet to the chest and went into the brambles. It took two hours and I found him in the last of the light standing in a clearing eating something he should not have been eating, and he came home without any argument at all, which is the part that annoys me most about the whole afternoon.

Toby saw me come back. He did not say anything then. But that night at the table he asked me, in a very careful voice, whether I would have crossed there for him.

I put my fork down. I have not always known what to say to that boy but I knew what to say to that.

The plainest promise in the book

Moses is old and he is handing over, and he says something to a whole people and then, a few verses later, says the same thing to one man, which is worth noticing.

Be strong and of a good courage, fear not, nor be afraid of them: for the LORD thy God, he it is that doth go with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Deuteronomy 31:6)

Look at what the promise is actually about. It is not about the outcome and it is not about the land and it is not about the enemies, all of which were live questions that day. It is about company.

He it is that doth go with thee. The emphasis in the older English is deliberate and it is on the identity of the one going, not on the going.

You are accompanied by somebody whose whole promise here is presence rather than a description of how it goes. Deuteronomy 31:6 keeps the subject on God for the entire sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as sufficiency instead of as a dodge.

And then the two verbs, which are the same verb said twice from opposite ends. Fail thee is about running out. Forsake thee is about choosing to stop. He shuts both doors, which means the promise covers both the man who quits and the man who simply cannot do any more.

You have not been left by somebody who ran out, and you have not been left by somebody who decided to. The written word closes both of those in one clause, and His Spirit is what makes a closed door feel like a wall at your back rather than a wall in front of you.

What the writer of Hebrews does with it

That sentence gets picked up centuries later, and what the writer does with it is worth watching, because he applies it to a completely different problem.

Let your conversation be without covetousness; and be content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. So that we may boldly say, The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me. (Hebrews 13:5, 6)

The context there is not a battle. It is money and contentment, which is a much smaller and more ordinary thing, and the writer reaches for the biggest promise in the book to deal with it.

That tells you something about how that promise is meant to be used. It is not for the dramatic day. It is general purpose.

You are covered by a promise that was never rationed to the big occasions. Hebrews 13:5 applies it to an ordinary anxiety without apologizing for the scale, and the Spirit of God is what makes it available on a Tuesday rather than only in a crisis.

And the response the writer draws out of it is a bold sentence rather than a quiet one: so that we may boldly say.

You have been given something to say out loud rather than something to hold quietly. That is what Hebrews 13:6 does with the promise rather than what people usually do with it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves it from a comfort into a sentence in somebody's mouth.