Freely Is The Whole Word

The fountain in the square was restored two summers ago and it works, and Ronan reached for his pocket the first time he used it, which is the whole of this article.

It is a proper old one. Four spouts, a stone basin, a brass plate about a Victorian alderman. It had been dry since about 1990 and full of cigarette ends, and then the town got some money and now it runs from seven in the morning until nine at night and children drink out of it with their hands.

Ronan was walking through in July with a dry mouth and he stopped and drank, and then he straightened up and his hand went to his back pocket.

Nobody was there. There was no attendant. There is not even a collecting box, because there was an argument about that at the council and the argument was won by a woman who said, apparently, that a fountain with a box next to it is not a fountain.

His hand went to his pocket anyway.

He stood there and laughed at himself and then, over the next few weeks, stopped finding it funny.

Because he started noticing when else it happened. It happens when somebody gives him a lift. It happens when his sister feeds him. It happens when a colleague picks something up for him at lunch and waves off the money for the third time. There is a specific small distress that arrives when a thing is given to him and there is nothing to hand back, and he had been living with it so long that he had stopped experiencing it as distress and had started experiencing it as manners.

He said it to his brother in law in September, in the square, actually at that fountain.

He said, "I can't take anything."

And his brother in law, who is a bricklayer and not a philosopher, said: "That's a hard way to live, that."

Ronan said yes.

They stood there for a bit. Then his brother in law said, "The water doesn't mind."

You may reach for your pocket too. It might be money or it might be a favor returned or a message answered quickly enough or a determination not to be a burden. And it is not humility, and it is not good manners, although it dresses up as both. It is that receiving without returning has become genuinely uncomfortable to you. And nobody has ever pointed out what the last invitation in the Bible actually says.

The Last Word Of The Last Invitation

There is an invitation right at the end of Revelation, and it is the last one in the book, and everything about it is water and nobody at any point pays for anything.

"And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."Revelation 22:17

Look at where the word freely is sitting. It is the last word. Everything else in that verse is invitation piled on invitation, four separate comes, and then the final word closes the whole thing by removing the transaction.

That is not decoration and it is not a flourish. The Bible ends its last invitation by specifying the terms, because it knows exactly what a person standing at a fountain does with their hand.

You have been handed the terms in the last word of the last invitation there is. Revelation 22 spends its final clause on the price so that nobody has to ask, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and stands it in a town square in July.

And notice who is asked. Whosoever will. That is the widest phrase available in that language. Not whoever qualifies, not whoever has something to offer, not whoever has been coming a while. Whoever wants to.

You were included by the widest phrase the book has, and then told the price was nothing. That is what the written word does at the very end of itself, and it is the Spirit of God who makes that land in a man who cannot take a lift without buying the gas.

There Is No Catch And You Can Check

Now say the thing plainly, because a person like Ronan will be reading ahead for the turn.

There is no turn. Nothing on this page asks you for anything at all. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no membership, no commitment, no next step, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere, including this one.

You can check. Read to the bottom. There is nothing there.

And this matters more than it sounds, because if you have spent years unable to receive, then every piece of kindness has arrived with a small unpaid invoice attached in your own head, and a page about grace that ends in a request would simply confirm the whole system.

So it does not. It ends the way the fountain ends, which is with the water still running and nobody standing next to it.

You have not incurred anything by reading this. It is written that we are justified freely by His grace, and that word freely is the same load bearing word doing the same job, and His Spirit is the one who has been standing beside you through every time your hand went to your pocket.

And you are fully welcome today with nothing to hand back, which is the whole of what this category is for, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page honest about its own terms.