Nobody Sent for the One Who Fixed It

The water pump in the bottom yard stopped on a Thursday, and by ten in the morning there were four men standing round it.

Me, Mr. Ames, his brother who used to do plumbing in town, and a man from the co-op who had come about something else entirely and stayed because a broken pump is more interesting than paperwork. Four men. Two hours. We took the head off it twice.

Toby was outside the whole time. He was outside because he is nine and because nobody sent for him, and it did not occur to a single one of us to send for him, and I want to be honest about that rather than tidy it up.

At about midday he came to the door of the shed because he wanted a drink, which he could not have, because the pump was in pieces on a sack. And he stood there for a while looking at the pieces on the sack, and then he said that the little copper washer was in wrong.

There is a washer in that pump that goes one way and looks identical the other way. He knew which way round it went because he had watched me put it back the previous spring, and none of the four of us had watched anybody do anything, we had all been reasoning from first principles at each other for two hours.

Bucky, meanwhile, had eaten the top off Mr. Ames's hat, which was on the wall where hats go, and Mr. Ames took it well.

The pump has run since. And what has stayed with me is not the washer. It is that the boy was on the other side of a door for two hours, and the door was not locked, and nobody thought of him, and he was not sulking out there either, he was doing something else and came in for a drink.

The lineup that was missing somebody

Samuel comes to Bethlehem to anoint a king and Jesse lines up his sons. This is a formal thing. A prophet is in the house. The sons are presented, oldest first, and every one of them is turned down.

And Samuel said unto Jesse, Are here all thy children? And he said, There remaineth yet the youngest, and, behold, he keepeth the sheep. (1 Samuel 16:11)

Read the question Samuel has to ask. Are here all thy children? He has to ask, because the family produced seven sons and stopped, and nobody in that room counted eight.

The boy was not being punished. He was not in trouble. He was doing a real job that had to be done by somebody, and the somebody was always going to be the one least needed indoors.

You are not missing from the list because somebody weighed you and put you aside. 1 Samuel 16:11 has a whole household simply not think of the boy, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between hearing that as an insult and hearing it as the setup.

And then the sentence that ends the chapter's argument: Send and fetch him: for we will not sit down till he come hither.

You have never once been unlisted where the decision was actually made. The written word stops a prophet's ceremony to go and get somebody out of a field, and His Spirit is what makes that hold in a person who has stopped expecting the door to open.

What God said He was looking at instead

The reason the lineup failed is stated out loud, and it is stated early, at the oldest and most impressive son.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7)

Eliab was tall. That is the whole of the case for Eliab, and it was enough for a prophet, who had just been about to anoint him, which the text quietly admits.

What God says is not that the outward appearance is unimportant. He says it is what man looks at, which is a description of us rather than an instruction to us, and He says He is doing something else.

You are being assessed by somebody working from information nobody in the room has. 1 Samuel 16:7 makes the Lord's sightline different in kind rather than merely fairer, and it is the Spirit of God who makes that a comfort instead of a threat.

You have already been seen all the way through, and what came back was chosen. That comes off the page rather than out of anybody's encouragement, and the Holy Spirit is what carries it off the page into a shed with the door shut.