Porch, dusk, the boards still warm, and the door open behind him so the noise comes out.
Three of them in there. The eldest is doing something at the table, the middle one is arguing about a rule in a game and losing, and the small one is singing to herself in the way she does when she thinks nobody is listening.
He knows all three from about eleven feet, with his eyes shut, in a wind.
He did not know that two years ago.
The eyesight has been going since he was thirty four and it accelerated in the spring, and they took the license in April, which he had known was coming and which still arrived like something dropped on a floor.
He has stopped working the way he worked, which is a longer story with a lot of paperwork in it.
And here is what he will not have said to him.
His brother in law said, at a barbecue, meaning it as a kindness, that at least it had brought him closer to the kids. And he said something short. Not rude. Short. And the man knew and went and got a plate.
Because the two things are true and they are not payment. He is not being compensated. Nobody made a trade. The middle one arguing about a rule is not a receipt for a parking lot he cannot drive out of.
If something was taken and something arrived, and somebody has tried to put the two in the same sentence, you know that porch. And you know how fast a man's voice goes short.
The word, and then who gives the treasure
Let me sit on the step and say the plain thing while the singing is still going.
The problem is not the sight. The sight is what it is and you have known its direction for a long time and there is a whole competence in you about it that nobody sees.
The problem is that people keep putting your children and your eyes in the same sentence, and every time they do you have to be short with somebody at a barbecue, and being short with kind people is exhausting.
So let me put the word straight first.
Blessed does not mean the good thing that came with it. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It was on you when you were driving and it was on you in April and it is on these boards, and nothing about the license changed the direction of His face.
Now the verse, and I want you to look at the verb and at what it attaches to.
And I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and hidden riches of secret places, that thou mayest know that I, the Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of Israel.Isaiah 45:3
I will give thee the treasures of darkness.
Read what He gives. The treasures. Not the darkness.
The verb attaches to the treasure. There is nothing in that sentence where God gives anybody the dark. The dark is where the treasure is, and He is the one bringing it out, and those are two entirely different roles.
You have been given something out of a dark place by somebody who is not the author of the dark. Isaiah 45:3 attaches the giving to the treasures rather than to the darkness, and it is the Holy Spirit who is at work in what a person finds rather than being the one who turned the light off.
What you actually have, named properly
Now the thing you have, because it should be named accurately and your brother in law named it badly.
He said it brought you closer to the kids. That is not what happened and it is not what you would say.
What happened is that you learned to hear. That is a skill. It took two years and it took attention and it is not a side effect, it is a thing you did, slowly, in a house, without anybody watching.
You know the eldest by the sound of her chair. You know the middle one's mood from four words. You know when the small one is singing to herself rather than performing, which is a distinction most parents with perfect sight never make in eighteen years.
That is not compensation. Compensation is passive. That is competence, and you built it.
You have built something rather than been given a consolation, and there is a difference and it is the whole difference. Isaiah 45:3 speaks of treasures found in dark places rather than gifts handed to people in them, and it is the Holy Spirit who works in a person's attention over two years, which is where the hearing actually came from.
And here is the thing that makes your shortness at the barbecue correct rather than ungrateful.
If the hearing is payment for the sight, then it is a bad trade and you would refuse it, and everybody knows that including your brother in law if he thought about it for four seconds.
If the hearing is a thing you built in a dark room, it is yours, and it does not have a price tag on it, and nothing had to be taken for you to be allowed to have it.
You are holding something with no price attached to it, and nothing was ever exchanged for it. The written word puts the treasure in the dark without ever calling the dark the cost of it, and His Spirit is the one who does that work without a transaction anywhere in it.
What I will not say on this porch
Now, plainly, because you have had two years of people being kind at you.
I am not going to tell you the sight comes back. I do not know and neither does anybody, and you have a consultant and a direction and you know more about it than any of us.
And I am not going to tell you it happened so that you would hear your children. That is the sentence your brother in law reached for and it is the one you have been refusing, and you are right, and I am not going to hand it back to you in better clothes.
And I am not going to tell you the license does not matter. It matters. There is a specific loss in a set of keys that people who have never lost them do not understand, and it is not about the driving, it is about what a man can do for his own household without asking.
Both halves. The spring was a real loss and the hearing is a real thing you have.
You are favored and they took the keys in April, and neither of those is evidence about the other. Scripture puts the treasure and the darkness in one verse without making one the price of the other, and it is the Holy Spirit who lets a man hold both on a porch without owing anybody a tidy sentence.
So here is what I want to hand you before the small one comes out to find you.
You are not being paid. Nobody made a trade, and the reason your voice goes short at barbecues is that you can hear a transaction being proposed and you are right to refuse it.
You are blessed on this porch tonight, with the keys gone since April, and blessed means the favor of God is resting on you here. Isaiah 45:3 says I will give thee the treasures of darkness, with the giving attached to the treasure, and it is the Holy Spirit who is at work in what a man finds rather than the one who dimmed the room.
So take the word. Not the barbecue version. Isaiah's. Say it over the two years you have actually had, the spring, the paperwork, the eleven feet in a wind, the eldest by the sound of her chair, the small one singing when she thinks nobody is listening, and mean by it what the verse means: I have been given treasure out of a dark place by somebody who never turned the light off.
You have a thing you built with no price tag on it, and nothing had to be taken for you to be allowed to keep it. Scripture never once names the darkness as the cost of the treasure, and His Spirit is the one who has been working in a man's attention for two years in a house nobody was watching.
Declare this over yourself
Say this out loud on the porch. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing to say what a word means over your own life came with Him and not with what you can still see. Scripture is under every line here and the Holy Spirit carries it, not how gracious you manage to be with kind people. What He does about your sight is His to decide, in His own way and in His own time, and I am not going to guess it in either direction. Your part is to say it and mean it, in two sentences and not one.
- Keys they took off me in the spring, you are a set of car keys and you are not a payment I made for anything. Isaiah 45 says I will give thee the treasures of darkness, and give is a word about the treasure and never about the dark.
- Trade somebody keeps proposing at barbecues, get out, in the name of Jesus. It is written that the treasure is found in the dark place and never once that the dark is the price of it, and I would refuse that trade in four seconds.
- Lord, You gave me treasure out of a dark room and You are not the one who dimmed it. Your favor is on me on these boards, and I am saying both sentences out loud and letting each one stand on its own.
Isaiah 45:3
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