I Heard About It On The News With Everybody Else

You found out at twenty past six in the evening, standing in your own kitchen.

Not from a message. Not from a call. From the same broadcast that was on in about four hundred houses in your town at the same moment.

You stood there with a dish towel in your hand.

And then the first thing you thought about was not the thing itself. It was six o'clock the next morning, and the door, and who would be standing outside it.

That is the part nobody understands from outside this. You did not get a warning and you did not get a briefing and you did not get anything at all, and you still had to open at six.

Here is what has stayed with you, three weeks on.

It is not anger about the not being told. You have thought about that and worked out that there was probably no way for anybody to tell two hundred and eleven people before a broadcast, and that in their position you would probably have done the same.

It is that you had to be steady in front of people the next morning, with nothing in your hands, and you did not know whether you would be able to.

You were. That is the strange thing. You were steady, and you cannot account for it.

There is a verse about news arriving and about what makes a person able to stand in it.

His heart is fixed

The psalm describes somebody and includes a line about bad news.

He shall not be afraid of evil tidings: his heart is fixed, trusting in the LORD. (Psalm 112:7, King James Version)

Look at the order in that sentence, because the order is the whole answer.

The heart is fixed first. The tidings come second. The not being afraid is not something a person produces when the news arrives; it is the result of something that was already true before it did.

You have a heart that was fixed long before that broadcast, and the Holy Spirit is the one who did that fixing. Psalm 112:7 puts the fixing ahead of the tidings rather than after them, and He did it over years rather than at twenty past six on a Tuesday.

Which explains the thing you cannot account for.

There was steadiness the next morning and nobody in that kitchen knew it was coming. Of course not. Nobody knows in advance what they have; a person finds out at six o'clock.

What you found out is that something had already been done in you.

You were standing on something that was put there before you needed it, and it is written that the heart is fixed and therefore not afraid. The Spirit of God is the one who does that work in advance, and Psalm 112 describes it in exactly that order.

And notice what the verse does not promise.

It does not say the tidings will be good. It does not say there will not be any. It says evil tidings, plainly, as a thing that arrives in the life of the person being described.

You are inside a verse that expects the news rather than one that prevents it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who prepares a person for what is coming rather than removing it. Scripture names evil tidings without softening them, and Psalm 112:7 is where that is said.

What the fixing was made of

Let me be specific about the ground under that morning, because it is worth knowing what it was made of.

It was not information. You had none.

It was not a plan. There was no plan and there was no time to make one.

It was about eleven years of getting up and opening a door, and knowing your own people by name, and knowing that the woman who comes in at ten past six wants the same thing every morning. That is what a fixed heart is actually made of in a working life.

You have been building that for eleven years without calling it anything, and the written word puts the fixing before the trouble arrives. The Spirit of God is the one who was building it, and Psalm 112 does not describe it as a technique.

And there is one more piece, and it is the practical one for the next time.

There will be a next time. Not necessarily like this one. But something will arrive from a long way off with no warning, and the same question will come up.

And the answer is the same as it was three weeks ago: open at six, and say the same thing you always say.

You are able to do the ordinary thing when the extraordinary arrives, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person through that. It is written that the fixed heart is not afraid of the tidings, and Psalm 112:7 describes it as a condition rather than an effort.

Open at the usual time

So here is the thing to do, and it has already been done once, and it is worth doing on purpose.

Open the door at your usual time. Not early, not late.

Then say the same thing you always say to the first person who comes in. The ordinary greeting. The thing about the weather. Whatever it is.

You are doing the ordinary thing on purpose rather than bracing for anything, and Psalm 112:7 says the heart is fixed and therefore is not afraid. The Spirit of God is the one who put that steadiness there, and He put it there years ago.

The reason the ordinary greeting matters more than anything clever is that everybody who comes in is watching to see what has changed.

If the greeting is the same, something enormous has been communicated without one word about the incident, and it is the true thing: this place is still what it was and the woman running it is still standing here.

You have been given a way to say the whole thing without mentioning it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary greeting carry that much. The written word puts the not being afraid in a heart rather than in a statement, and Psalm 112 is where the steadiness comes from.

Then open in the morning and do it again, and the broadcast was three weeks ago.