The Woman Who Discipled Me

Two years of Tuesdays. That is what it cost her, and she never once mentioned the cost, which is why it counts.

Her name is Bernice and she is sixty something and she drove across a city every Tuesday evening for two years to sit in a kitchen with a woman twenty five years younger than her and go through things line by line. She brought her own coffee because she is particular. She read the same passages four times when they needed reading four times. She never once looked at her watch.

And on the Sunday it all came out, in front of about three hundred people, the younger woman stood up and told them what God had done and what she was never going back to, and Bernice was in the third row and did not cry, because she is not a crier, but she sat up very straight.

She went back inside eighteen months.

That was six years ago. And what she has done since is not dramatic and it is total: she moved churches, she moved neighborhoods, she changed her number once for an unrelated reason and did not give Bernice the new one, and she has become a woman who is extremely good at not being anywhere.

She could handle three hundred people. Three hundred people is a crowd and a crowd forgets. What she cannot handle is one woman in a third row who gave her two years of Tuesdays and got that.

You may have one person like that. Not the crowd. The one who invested. And the crowd may be no trouble at all while that single face keeps you out of a whole building.

The word whosoever is doing work

Now let me put a short verse in front of you, and I am going to make you look at one word in it, because that word is the whole answer to a woman in your position.

Paul is in the middle of an argument about who is in and who is out, and he quotes Isaiah at them.

For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.Romans 10:11

You are held inside the widest word available in the language, and the promise attached to it is about shame. Romans 10:11 puts whosoever at the front of the sentence on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has settled this while you crossed the street.

Whosoever

That word is there for a reason. Paul is arguing against a system in which some people had standing and others did not, and he reaches for the widest word available in the language and drops it at the front of the sentence.

Whosoever. Not: whosoever has not embarrassed anybody. Not: whosoever has not wasted somebody's investment. Not: whosoever's return would be uncomplicated for the people around them.

And then the promise attached to it is specifically about shame. Of all the things Paul could have quoted, in a chapter about being saved, he chooses the line about not being ashamed, because he knows that shame is the thing that keeps people from believing they are included.

You are held inside the widest word in the sentence, and the promise attached to it is precisely about shame. Romans 10:11 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it out of an argument about Israel and the nations and stands it beside a woman who changed her number.

Now let me speak about Bernice, because I am not going to let this article turn her into a problem to be managed.

That woman gave two years of Tuesdays. That is a real gift, freely given, at cost, and you are right to hold it as a serious thing rather than shrugging it off. Do not let anybody talk you into being casual about it.

But look at what you have done with it. You have converted a gift into a debt, and then defaulted on the debt, and then made yourself unreachable so that the creditor cannot find you. And Bernice, who has never once in her life presented anybody with a bill, has been recast in your head as a creditor without ever being asked whether she wanted the job.

You have made a debt out of something that was given, and appointed a woman a creditor without her consent. Scripture puts the whole matter of shame under a promise with the word whosoever at the front of it, and the Spirit of God has been settling your standing through six years of you being nowhere.

What she was actually doing

And one more thing about Tuesdays, which you may not have considered from the inside of your own shame.

A woman who drives across a city for two years for somebody twenty five years younger is not making an investment with an expected return. That is not what that is. Nobody does that for a result; the ones who do it for a result give up in month four when the results are not appearing.

She did it because that is what she is. And a thing done because of what somebody is does not become a waste when the outcome disappoints, any more than rain is wasted on a field that does not come up.

You are not a failed return on an investment, because nobody was investing. His word says it and does not soften it, and that is what the whosoever means when it stands in front of a promise about shame, and His Spirit is the one who has kept that true for six years while you rearranged your life around one face.