Six Winters Since the Plant

They chained the gate in March and left the sign up, and the sign is still up, and that is somehow worse than if they had taken it down.

Six winters.

Four hundred people, and then no people, and then the small things that go with four hundred people: the café by the roundabout, the taxi firm, the two shops, the man who did the tires. None of those closed because of anything they did.

You have worked since. Bits. A stretch driving, a season at the depot forty minutes each way, a run of eight months that was genuinely good and then the contract went to a bigger firm.

What has changed is not the money, exactly, though the money has changed. It is that you have stopped saying out loud that you are looking.

Because looking implies there is something to look at, and there is not, not here. Scripture states that condition plainly and does not argue with it, Isaiah 41:17, and the Holy Spirit has been in this town through every one of those winters anyway.

Your daughter said something in the spring about moving. Not for herself. For you.

And you said, we will see. Which is what you say now.

The verse describes people who look and find nothing

There is a passage in Isaiah that begins by admitting the thing most people skip.

When the poor and needy seek water, and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, I the LORD will hear them, I the God of Israel will not forsake them. I will open rivers in high places, and fountains in the midst of the valleys: I will make the wilderness a pool of water, and the dry land springs of water.Isaiah 41:17-18

Look at the first line. They seek water, and there is none. God does not dispute that. He does not correct their assessment or suggest they were not looking properly.

He begins by agreeing that there is nothing there.

And then the first thing He says He will do is not to send water. It is I will hear them. Hearing comes before rivers, and He puts it in that order Himself.

You are heard in a town where the answer is not available. I am not putting my own idea over you here. Scripture says when they seek water and there is none, I the Lord will hear them, Isaiah 41:17, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man standing at a chained gate rather than staying a fine sentence about God.

I am not going to promise you what happens to this town. That verse is God's word to His people and it is not a forecast for a valley in a particular decade, and anybody who preaches it as one is writing a check nobody authorized.

We are not explaining the six winters

I will not, and I want to say so.

Nobody knows why this valley and not another one. The people who arrive with a reason usually arrive in a car with somewhere else to be, and the reason is usually about the economy or about character and both of those are somebody else's comfort dressed as insight.

Not a season with a purpose you must accept. Not a lesson. Scripture is willing to state a lack plainly and leave the reason out of the sentence, Isaiah 41:17, and the Holy Spirit does not need a man to have understood a thing before He will stand at a fence with him.

You are not being corrected by six winters. You are in a valley where the work went, and God is at the gate.

The land is not against you

One thing worth saying plainly, because it is in the air in a place like this.

This ground is not unlucky. The hills are not turned against the town, and the valley is not holding anything back from anybody. That kind of talk is common in a place that has been let down and it does real damage, because it turns a market decision made in an office somewhere into something ancient and personal.

The land here is the Creator's handiwork and nothing else. It has no verdict in it, no memory of the plant, and no power of its own.

You are not living under anything. Scripture says the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof, Psalm 24:1, and the Holy Spirit does not leave a family in a valley at the mercy of the valley.

The sentence you stopped saying

Here is the actual cost of six winters, and it is not the driving job. Scripture says hope deferred makes the heart sick and names it without blaming anybody, Proverbs 13:12, and the Holy Spirit has been in this house through all of it.

You stopped saying you are looking. And with it, quietly, you stopped saying most things that assume a future, and the whole household has adjusted to a man who says we will see.

Your daughter heard that in the spring. She is not worried about the money. She is worried that her father has stopped talking about anything that has not happened yet.

That is not despair. It is a reasonable adaptation to six years of hopeful sentences going nowhere, and it worked. Scripture does not scold a man for it, Proverbs 13:12, and the Holy Spirit has not been holding it against you.

You have not been asked to go silent about the future. Scripture says hope maketh not ashamed, Romans 5:5, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a sentence about tomorrow back in a man's mouth without making him pretend about today.