Three Stalls Down

He sees the coat first, the green one, and then the back of the head, and by the time the man turns to pay for his eggs he has already put his own back to the whole row and is studying apples he has no intention of buying.

Saturday market. Late in the day, when the stalls start dropping their prices and the crowd thickens. Somebody's dog under the cheese table. A woman with a pushchair trying to get past him and being polite about it. He picks up an apple, turns it, puts it down, picks up another, and the whole time he is watching the man in the green coat in the reflection of the fishmonger's glass, three stalls down, buying eggs and laughing with the lad on the stall the way he laughs with everyone.

That man held the microphone. That is the whole of it. Six years ago, in a river with the whole church on the bank, this friend stood waist deep beside him and held the microphone to his mouth, and he said, out loud, in front of all of them, I give You the whole of it, Lord, all of it, from today. And they cheered. He can still hear the specific sound of that cheer coming across the water. And then, over a couple of ordinary years, with no scandal and no reason he could name, all of it became some of it, and some of it became none of it, and the man in the green coat kept turning up at things and kept being kind, which was worse.

He wants to come back. He has wanted to for a while. It is not God he cannot face. It is the bank of the river. It is the forty people who cheered, and this one most of all, who held the microphone and heard every word, and who is now three stalls down and about to turn round.

You know that stall. You know exactly which face is three down from you, and you know that the promise you made was to God and that somehow the person you cannot look at is not God. Hold that thought, because it is truer than you think, and it is the door.

Which court this is

Here is the first thing, and it is a matter of fact before it is a matter of comfort. When you gave your word, you gave it to God. Not to the man with the microphone. Not to the forty on the bank. They heard it. He received it. There is a difference between a witness and a party, and the difference decides which court a man is standing in.

Those who look to him are radiant, and their faces shall never be ashamed.Psalm 34:5

David wrote that after a day in front of a foreign king that gave him no reason to be proud, and the psalm does not pretend otherwise. But look where he puts the face. Not toward the people who saw. Toward Him. Those who look to Him are radiant, and the shame that was on the face lifts, and it does not lift because the witnesses have changed their minds. It lifts because the face has turned.

You are looking at the wrong stall, and the moment you look at Him the shame has no face to sit on. That is not a technique I am handing you. It is written, look to Him and be radiant, and it is the Holy Spirit who turns a man's head at a market, quietly, from the coat to the covenant. God is the one you gave your word to. God is the one who has taken you back. What the forty saw is real, and it is not the court.

You are standing in one court and not two, and the second one was never sworn in. Psalm 34:5 puts the lightening in the direction of the looking rather than in the response of a room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has settled your face while you counted the stalls.

He never once brought up the courtyard

Now the second thing, and it is why I know the first thing is not a trick. There is a man in the Gospels who broke his word in front of witnesses, and not quietly. He said, at supper, in front of all of them, I will never fall away, I will die with You. Hours later, by a fire in a courtyard, a servant girl said this man was with Him, and he said I do not know Him, and he said it three times, and a rooster crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at him. That is Peter. That is a promise made in front of eleven and broken in front of strangers, and everybody knew.

Watch how the return happens, because it happens in front of witnesses too. Another fire, on a beach, six of the others sitting round it. Jesus cooks breakfast. And then He asks Peter, in front of them, do you love Me, and He asks it three times, and He never once mentions the courtyard. Not a word. No account of the three denials, no request for an explanation, no probation. He asks the one question that matters and He hands the man his work back, in front of the very people who heard him swear.

You have a return that does not require a hearing, because He is the one who sets the terms and He set them at a breakfast, not a bench. Scripture records it in full in John 21, and it is the Spirit of that same Lord who is standing at your shoulder at the market, asking the one question, and not asking the other. The witnesses were there when Peter fell and they were there when he was restored, and the restoration was not put to them for a vote. It was His.

The man in the green coat does not hold your covenant. He held a microphone. That is all he ever held.

You have been met by somebody who did not raise it, and the not raising was deliberate. Scripture keeps a fire and a question and a job in the record with no reference at all to the denial, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has held that silence over you ever since.