Nobody Is Going To Bring It Up

Something happened at teatime.

What it was is not going into this. It does not matter, and writing it down would be the exact opposite of what this whole message is for. It was ordinary. It was the size of thing a six year old does.

Everybody dealt with it. There was a wobble, there was a sorry, there was a hug that was slightly too tight on both sides, and his mother said the words she always says, which are that it is done and nobody is cross.

Then there was pudding, and a bath, and a story about a badger, and the lamp went off at ten past eight.

It is now twenty to nine, and Joe is lying on his back with his eyes open.

He is not thinking about teatime. He has finished with teatime. He is somewhere else entirely, and if you could see it you would recognize it immediately, because grown-ups do the identical thing at two in the morning about an email.

Joe is running tomorrow.

He is at the breakfast table in his head. Nan is coming at ten. And somewhere in the middle of it, in the version he keeps playing, somebody says it. Out loud. In front of everyone. Not angrily. That is almost worse. Just mentioned, the way you mention the weather, and everyone hears it, and there it is again.

That is what he is awake for. Not the wrong thing. The reading out of it.

And this is the part most of us miss, because we honestly believed we had dealt with it at teatime. A child does not think forgiveness means gone. A child thinks forgiveness means postponed. Held over. Kept somewhere, in case it is needed.

If your small person is lying there running tomorrow morning, this is for you.

There is one true thing to hand them, and it is one word long.

The fear is not the fault

Notice what he is not doing. He is not lying there being sorry. That happened at teatime, honestly and completely, and it cost him something to do it.

He is lying there braced.

Which means that another apology tonight will not help him, and asking whether he understands why it was wrong will not help him, and going over it once more so it really sinks in is the one thing certain to keep him awake. The subject was closed hours ago. What is still open is the question of whether closed means closed.

You are standing at the end of a day that is genuinely finished, and so is the thing inside it. Isaiah 43:25 says God wipes it away for His own sake and does not bring it to mind again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land in a small chest at twenty to nine.

Read what God says about His own reasons there, because it changes everything about tonight.

I am the One who wipes away what you did wrong, and I do it for My own sake. I do not bring your wrongs to mind again.Isaiah 43:25

For My own sake. Not because the sorry was good enough, or timely, or tearful enough to qualify. He does it because of who He is, which means the whole weight of it sits on Him and none of it sits on a six year old who did an ordinary six year old thing before pudding.

You have nothing to weigh up tonight and nothing to assess. Scripture says as far as the east is from the west, that is how far He has put it away from us, and the Holy Spirit is the one who closes that distance instead of measuring it.

Finished means it does not come back

Here is the sentence a child in that bed actually needs, and it is not the sentence about being forgiven. They have heard that one. It has not touched the thing.

The sentence is: nobody is going to bring it up.

Not at breakfast. Not when Nan comes at ten. Not next week when something else goes wrong and this could be produced as evidence. It is not being kept anywhere by anyone, and it is not coming back around.

That is what finished means, and it is the part nobody thinks to say out loud because to a grown-up it seems obvious. At six it is not obvious in the slightest. Half a child's life is made of things being mentioned again later.

You were not given the job of deciding whether your child is sorry enough. The written word says He does not deal with us the way our wrongs deserve, and the Holy Spirit is the one who settles a heart that is already forgiven and has not caught up with it yet.

And nothing here asks a child to feel something before it counts. Feeling sorry is not the payment. There is no payment being collected, and a child lying awake trying to feel worse in order to be safer is a child working very hard on a bill that was already settled by somebody else.

You have permission to say the word finished and then say nothing else at all. His word says it is finished, said out loud at the cross and never taken back since, and the Holy Spirit is the one holding that word steady over a bedroom tonight.

The proof turns up tomorrow, and it turns up as nothing. Breakfast happens, Nan arrives at ten, and the subject simply never appears. A child learns what finished means the way anybody does, by living through the morning that was supposed to hold the reckoning and finding it empty.

You are not the one keeping this closed. Scripture says He removes it and He does not bring it up again, and the Holy Spirit keeps it down while a small person slowly learns to believe it.