My Contact Has Changed Again

The fourth one arrived in March.

A pleasant message. Introducing themselves. Looking forward to working together. A line about being here to help.

And you looked at it and felt absolutely nothing at all, and that is the part worth writing about.

The first one, four years ago, you liked. You knew about her wedding. She knew which of your people had been ill.

The second one you got on with fine.

The third one you did not bother with much, and you noticed that at the time and told yourself you were being sensible.

And the fourth one you have not learned. You know the name is in the message and you could look it up in four seconds and you have not.

Here is what you do not like about that.

You are not a woman who does that. You are the person who knows everybody's name. It is one of the things you are actually proud of, and now there is one specific category of human being you have stopped extending it to.

And you know exactly why. There is no point. They will be gone by next spring and there will be a fifth.

The reasoning is sound and the result is that you have started protecting yourself by not learning names, and that is a small hardness, and you can feel it.

There is a verse about somebody who does not get reassigned.

The same yesterday, and to day, and for ever

Hebrews makes a statement that is short enough to miss.

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. (Hebrews 13:8, King James Version)

Three time frames in one sentence. Yesterday. Today. For ever.

He is being contrasted with something. The verses around this one are about leaders who have come and gone and about strange doctrines that arrive and pass through.

The whole point of the sentence is that in a life full of things that get replaced, there is one that does not.

You have one relationship in all of this that has never been reassigned, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been the constant while four different people have introduced themselves. Hebrews 13:8 puts yesterday and today and for ever in the same person, and He did not send an introductory message.

Now the useful part, which is what that does to the fifth one.

Relationship has been treated here as something that costs and must therefore be rationed. That is a reasonable conclusion for a woman who has been introduced to four people in four years.

But rationing only makes sense if the supply is limited. And the reason the supply felt limited is that you were relying on those relationships for something that they were never going to provide.

You have not been running out of anything, and it is written that there is one who is the same yesterday and today and for ever. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies the constancy, and Hebrews 13 puts it in Him rather than in a contact.

And that is what frees you to spend on a fifth one without protecting yourself.

If the constancy comes from somewhere else, then the fifth person does not have to be permanent to be worth knowing. They can be a person who is there for eight months and then goes, and you can know their name for eight months, and nothing is lost.

You are able to spend on somebody temporary without it costing you anything, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real economy rather than a nice sentiment. Scripture puts the permanent thing in Christ rather than in a working relationship, and Hebrews 13:8 is where the constant is named.

What the hardness is actually costing

Let me be plain about the price, because it is not being paid by anybody in an office.

The fifth person will not suffer from your not learning their name. They have two hundred and eleven buildings and they will be perfectly all right.

The cost lands on the woman doing it. One category of person now gets nothing extended to them, and a woman who has one of those tends to acquire a second one.

That is how it goes. It never stays with the category it started in.

You have been protecting yourself at a price nobody else is paying, and the written word puts the unchanging thing outside every human arrangement. The Spirit of God is the one who catches that before it spreads, and He is catching it now rather than in three years.

And there is one more thing, and it is the encouraging one.

You noticed. That is the whole reason this is readable to you. A woman in whom this had already set would not have felt the nothing in March and thought about it since.

You are not hardening, and the Holy Spirit is the one who raised the discomfort in March. It is written that the one who is the same for ever is the one holding a person steady through changes, and Hebrews 13:8 is the ground He raised it from.

Learn the fifth one's name

So here is the thing to do, and it takes about four seconds plus one sentence.

Learn the name. Look at the message and learn it properly, the way you learn the name of somebody who works for you.

Then use it in the first sentence of your next reply. Not at the end. First sentence.

You are extending something rather than defending something, and Hebrews 13:8 says the constant is Christ rather than a contact. The Spirit of God is the one who works in a sentence that small, and He is not asking you to feel differently first.

The reason it has to be the first sentence is that a name at the end of a message is a courtesy and a name at the start is an address.

You know that. You do it with your own people every day without thinking about it.

You have been using the true version of this with everybody else already, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been the same through all four of them. The written word makes constancy something received rather than something extracted, and Hebrews 13 is where He says so.

Then go and open in the morning, and there will be a fifth and then a sixth, and that is what the job is.