I Was Fifty and Scared of a Phone Call

There was a telephone call I needed to make and I did not make it for nine days.

It would have taken four minutes. I timed it afterward, out of a sort of grim curiosity, and it was four minutes and eleven seconds including the part at the start where you say who you are.

I am not going to say what it was about. It was money and it was a mistake I had made and it was the kind of thing where the longer a man leaves it the more the leaving it becomes the problem, and every reader over about thirty knows this call and has one of their own.

Nine days. And in those nine days I mended a gate, moved forty ewes, did the accounts, went to a funeral, and drove sixty miles to look at a machine I did not buy. I did all of that. What I did not do is stand in my own kitchen and press eleven buttons.

Toby noticed. He is nine and he notices everything, and on about day six he asked me if I was cross with him, which is what children ask when there is something in a house and nobody has told them what it is.

That is the thing about a thing you are not doing. It does not stay in you. It gets into the room and everybody in the room breathes it, and the person who breathes the most of it is the smallest one.

I made the call on the Thursday morning with Bucky standing in the doorway watching, because the back door was open and he stands in doorways. Four minutes and eleven seconds. The person on the other end was perfectly reasonable, said it happened all the time, and told me what to do about it.

I sat down on the chair by the phone afterward and I was shaking slightly, which at fifty is an undignified thing to admit and is exactly what happened.

Toby came in about a minute later and asked if he could go to Sam's, and I said yes, and he went, and the whole house was different for reasons he has never known about.

The reason attached is not about you

God says something to Joshua three times in one chapter and the third time He adds a question at the front of it.

Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. (Joshua 1:9)

Read the reason clause. For the LORD thy God is with thee. Every single word of the reason is about God and not one word of it is about Joshua.

He is not told he is stronger than he thinks. He is not told the Jordan is smaller than it looks. He is given a fact about company and told to be strong on the basis of it, which is a completely different transaction from the one people usually imagine courage to be.

You are being given a reason that has nothing to do with your own capacity, and Joshua 1:9 keeps the entire reason clause on God. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as relief instead of as a demand.

And the word whithersoever is doing quiet work. Not in the campaign. Not in the important places. Wherever, which includes a kitchen with a telephone on the wall in it.

You have not been left alone in the small places. The written word puts the promise on every location rather than on the significant ones, and His Spirit is what makes that cover a Thursday morning at fifty.

Most courage is very small and nobody sees it

There is a thing that needs saying to a child and it is not what children usually hear about being brave.

Almost every brave thing anybody ever does is about four minutes long and looks like nothing from outside. It is a sentence said, or a door knocked on, or a number dialed. There is no music and nobody claps and there is frequently nobody in the room.

Scripture is unusually honest about this. When the men who had been with Jesus were brought in front of the council, what is recorded is not that they were impressive.

Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus. (Acts 4:13)

The council does the arithmetic and cannot make it work. Two ordinary men, no training, no standing, and a boldness that has to be accounted for, and the account they arrive at is a fact about who these men had been near.

You are able to be bold because of who you have been with rather than because of what you are. Acts 4:13 has a hostile council reaching that conclusion, and the Spirit of God is what makes that read as a fact rather than as a compliment.

And Joshua is told the same thing in the same chapter twice before the version everybody quotes, which suggests that being told once was not going to be enough for him either.

You have been told this more than once on purpose. Joshua 1:6 and Joshua 1:7 say it before Joshua 1:9 does, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes repetition a kindness rather than an accusation about how slowly anybody learns.