Half twelve and it is eleven deep, which is the good problem, and there is a rhythm to it that he found in about his third month and has never lost.
Corner pitch, under a canopy, with the griddle going and the steam coming straight up because there is no wind today. A hand written board with six things on it and a seventh added in a different pen. A tin for the change and a card reader that works about four times out of five and gets talked to sternly.
He knows about a third of that queue by name and another third by order.
He is good with them. Not in a performing way. He asks a man about a knee. He tells a woman her hair suits her like that, and it does. There is a lad who comes on a Wednesday who is plainly having a hard year, and every single Wednesday he gets an extra thing in the box and neither of them has ever mentioned it.
That is a man standing in a street in broad daylight being entirely himself with about forty people a day.
And there is one thing about him that not a single person in that queue knows, and there is a verse he has been carrying for about nine years like a stone in a boot.
If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another.
He has understood it to mean telling. That walking in the light is the practice of bringing things into the open where people can see them, and that until he does that he is not really walking in it and none of what he has with those forty people counts.
Sit down on the crate at the back with me. Today I am speaking to the one who did something a long way back, took it to God straight and meant every syllable, and has been carrying a verse as a debt.
And before anything else: nothing in this message asks you to tell anybody anything, and I am about to show you that the verse does not either.
The light is a place God is
Here is the verse, and then the thing John has already told you about the light.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.1 John 1:7
Now go back two verses, because John defines his terms before he uses them, and almost nobody reads the definition.
This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
The light is not a practice. The light is God.
So walking in the light means walking where He is. It is a location word. It describes a man going about his day in the company of the One who is light, and it says nothing whatever about what that man tells the people around him.
Read the comparison in the middle of the verse, too. As he is in the light. God is in the light. God is not disclosing anything to anybody in order to be there. He is in it because it is what He is.
You are walking in the light because you are walking where God is, and you were never being asked to produce a disclosure to get there. I am not being generous with the text. The written word defines the light two verses earlier and defines it as God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and gets it to a man under a canopy with a griddle going.
Where the fellowship actually comes from
Now the second half, because you have read the mechanism backwards and it has cost you nine years.
We have fellowship one with another.
You have taken that to mean: I tell them things, and therefore we are close. So the closeness is the reward for the telling, and since you are not telling, you have concluded the closeness is not real.
Read the sentence again. The condition is not that we tell one another. The condition is that we walk in the light, both of us, and the fellowship is what happens between two people who are in the same place.
Two men standing in the same sunlight are in the same sunlight. That is the whole mechanism. Neither of them has to say a word about how he got there.
So what you have with that queue is not a substitute for something real. It is the thing itself. It has been the thing itself for nine years.
You have real fellowship with the people in that street, and you were never counterfeiting it while you waited to qualify. Scripture makes shared location the condition in that sentence rather than shared disclosure, and it is His Spirit, not an account given, who makes two people in the same light actually company for each other.
So here is the thing, and it is one ordinary act, and there is no telling in it.
Choose one ordinary thing today, in advance, and do it in full view with your head up.
Serve the queue with your chin up rather than at the griddle. Say the thing you were going to say to the man about his knee, and look at him while you say it. Stand out in front of the stall for a minute with a cup of tea where the whole street can see you, rather than behind it.
Choose it now, so that it is not a matter of nerve when it comes.
And hear this plainly, because it matters more than the rest. I am not grading your day. If it is fine, good. If the stone in the boot is there the entire time, that is not a failure and nothing gets marked. And if next Tuesday it is all back, that day undoes nothing at all.
And one plain thing, because a page is not always the help a man needs. If what sits under this has gone past a heavy stretch into hours when being here at all feels like too much, tell one living person today. Your doctor, or a crisis line: 988 in the United States, 116 123 in the United Kingdom, or the emergency number where you live. You never have to say the thing itself in order to ask for help staying.
You are walking in the light where God is, and you were walking in it through every one of the nine years you thought you owed something. That is what the written word settles in 1 John 1, and the Holy Spirit is the one carrying it off a page and onto a corner pitch at half twelve.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and that is the ground under every word coming next. This is not a mood being worked up. It is agreement out loud with where the light is, and how today goes, and what next Tuesday is like, the outcome is His. The written word is what settled it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it.
- Queue eleven deep at half twelve, you are hungry people and forty minutes of good work. You were never a room I had to qualify for. The written word says God is light, and I am serving you with my chin up from now on.
- Reading that turned the light into a telling, you charged me nine years of rent on a debt that was never owed, and I close your account in the name of Jesus. John defined the light two verses earlier and defined it as God. It is a place and not a practice.
- Lord, You are the light and walking in it is walking where You are. I am coming out in front of the stall with a cup today. And the fellowship in that street was the real thing on every one of the nine years.
1 John 1:7
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.