The Hill She Stopped Climbing

The first of the month, whatever day it fell on, for nine years.

Up the track by the quarry, along the top, and then the flat place where you can see the whole of the valley, and she stayed there about twenty minutes and came down.

She prayed about one thing. Always the same thing. She was not rigid about the rest of her praying but this had a place and a date and she kept both.

She has not been up since a February about three years ago.

There was no last time that she recognized. She missed one because of weather, and then missed one because of somebody's birthday, and then it was March, and then it had been a while, and then it was a thing she used to do.

Here is the question she cannot settle, and she has been at it for three years.

Did she give up, or did she grow up?

Because there is a version of this where a woman stopped needing a monthly appointment to hold a thing steady, and that is maturity and she should be glad of it.

And there is a version where she quietly abandoned something, on a series of Fridays, without ever deciding, and told nobody, including herself.

She cannot tell. She goes up that hill for ordinary walks and stands in the flat place and feels something she cannot name, and comes down.

If you stopped doing something and never worked out what you did, come and stand up here a minute. Nobody is going to send you back up on the first.

The looking is fastened to a Person, and it has no upkeep in it

There is a phrase Paul writes to a young man, and what is missing from it is the whole of what you need.

Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ.Titus 2:13

There is no maintenance in that sentence. No frequency, no place, no day of the month, nothing that could lapse.

He does not say looking for it monthly. He does not describe a practice at all. The looking is a settled orientation rather than an activity with a schedule, and Paul, who is entirely capable of giving instructions when he wants to, gives none here.

Which means the thing you have been trying to judge yourself about is not in the passage anywhere.

You are looking toward a Person rather than keeping up an arrangement, and the passage attaches no upkeep at all. Titus 2:13 gives a Person as the object and no schedule of any kind, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the earnest of the inheritance in Ephesians 1:14, which means what holds this together was never a Friday.

Give up or grow up is the wrong question

Now let me take the question off you, because it has been carried for three years and it does not have an answer.

You have been trying to work out which of two verdicts applies to a woman who stopped going up a hill, and neither one was ever going to be handed down. Romans 8:1 says there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and it is written in the present tense to people in the middle of a long groaning, and it is the same Spirit named in that chapter as the one bearing witness, which means the verdict you have been waiting for is not coming because the case was never brought.

But look at what the passage does with a person in your position. Nothing. It does not evaluate the one hoping. It names what is hoped for, calls it blessed and glorious, and moves on to how people live in the meantime.

There is no column your February goes into.

And notice something worth noticing: if the hope were a thing maintained by climbing, then stopping the climb would be serious. If it is a Person appearing, then a track by a quarry is a place a woman used to go, and its going out of use is a fact about a calendar rather than about a soul.

You are not under assessment for a practice that lapsed, and no verdict is pending on it. Romans 8:1 says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and it is the Spirit of life named immediately after who made you free, which means the trial you have been running has no prosecutor but you.

And I am not going to tell you to start again on the first, or to give the hill up properly, or that a better woman would have kept it. Nothing here is a lever.

You have been carried through all nine years and through the three that followed. Isaiah 46:4 says even to your old age I am He, and to hoar hairs will I carry you, and it is His Spirit who does the carrying, which means the woman standing in the flat place feeling something she cannot name is being held while she stands there.

God is the one holding you, and He was holding you on the February you did not go and on every first since.