He Is The One Who Brings You Near

Every August the square fills up for four evenings and Emiliano has stood at the edge of it for nine of them.

He knows almost everybody. That is the thing that makes this hard to explain. He is not a stranger and he is not disliked and people say hello to him constantly.

He stands at the edge by the pharmacy, near enough to hear, far enough to leave.

He has a theory about himself which he has never said to anybody, which is that some people are the kind who get called forward and some people are the kind who stand near the pharmacy, and that this was decided a long time ago by something he cannot identify and cannot argue with.

His nephew, who is thirty and back from the city for the week, stood with him last August and could not work it out.

He said, "Tío, why are we over here?"

Emiliano said something about the noise.

And the nephew, who is fond of him and has the specific bluntness of somebody who has been away long enough to see a place, said, "You know they'd move up, right? If you went and stood there, they'd move up."

Emiliano said he knew that.

He does know that. That is the maddening part and he would be the first to say it. It has never been a question of whether they would make room. It has been that going and standing there is a claim, and making a claim is a thing you do when you are sure of your standing, and he has never once been sure of his standing.

Nine years by a pharmacy.

What actually happened last August was that old Ceferino, who is eighty-eight and walks with two sticks and has known Emiliano since he was born, came the whole way across that square, which took him about four minutes, and stood in front of him and said: "Come and sit down, you are blocking the pharmacy."

And then turned round and walked back, slowly, expecting to be followed.

Emiliano followed him.

You may be standing near your own pharmacy. Not excluded, not unwelcome, not disliked, and standing at the edge for years anyway, because the moving is a claim and you have never been certain enough of your standing to make one. And nobody has told you whose job the moving actually is.

Look At Who The Verb Belongs To

There is a line in a psalm about being brought near, and everything depends on noticing who is doing what in it.

"Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts."Psalm 65:4

Thou choosest. Thou causest to approach.

Both verbs belong to God. The man in that sentence is not the subject of a single action in it. He is chosen, and then he is caused to approach, and then he dwells, and the only thing he does on his own is the dwelling, which is what you do once you are already there.

That is a startling sentence for anybody who has spent years waiting to feel qualified enough to move.

You have not been failing to close a distance that was never yours to close. Psalm 65 puts both verbs on God's side and leaves the man with nothing to initiate, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and stands it in a square at golden hour beside a pharmacy.

And notice the last clause, because it is where the sentence lands. That he may dwell in thy courts. Dwelling is not visiting. It is the word for living somewhere. The whole trajectory of the verse runs from a choice God makes to a person living there permanently, and at no point in it does the person have to establish their right to be present.

You were caused to approach rather than left to work up the nerve. That is what the written word says about how anybody gets near, and it is the Spirit of God who makes a pair of verbs land in a man who has stood at an edge for nine years.

Nothing Here Asks You To Move First

Now let this page match that, because this is the strictest category on this site.

Nothing here asks anything of you. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no sign-up sheet, no membership, no step forward, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere at all, this one included.

You are not being asked to make a claim, come forward, sign anything, or establish that you belong. If you read this and go on standing exactly where you are standing, nothing whatever changes about a single word of it.

And if money is short for you, then nothing here is aimed at you sideways either. No small amount hinted at, no suggestion of time instead, nothing.

You have not been asked to prove your standing anywhere on this page. It is written that we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and access is a thing that was opened rather than a thing that was earned, and His Spirit is the one who has been standing by the pharmacy with you every one of the nine years.

And you are as fully welcome at the edge as in the middle, because the verbs in Psalm 65 do not require the man to have moved yet, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page from asking you to step forward in order to receive it.