The List I Could Not Get Through

There are nineteen names on it and he does not need the paper any more.

It started as a paper. It was a proper list, written out, folded into the back of something, and for the first year or two he would get it out. Now it lives in his head in the same order it has always been in, and the order is not alphabetical or important-first, it is just the order they arrived in, which means his sister is fourth because of a bad autumn eleven years ago and she has never moved.

He prays it in the car most mornings. It takes about nine minutes.

He is not going to pretend it is always warm. Plenty of mornings it is a list and he knows it is a list and he does it anyway, and he has always thought that was the right way round: you turn up whether or not you feel like it, and the feeling is not the point.

And on Tuesday he got to the fourth name and nothing came out.

Not a distraction. He was not thinking about work. He said his sister's name out loud the way he has said it every morning for eleven years and then he sat there at a red light with his mouth open and there was nothing behind it at all.

He tried the fifth name to see if it was just her. Nothing. He tried going back to the first. Nothing.

He drove the rest of the way in silence, which he cannot remember doing since he started.

That was ten days ago and he has not got through the list since. He has started it four times. It goes the same way every time and he stops at a different name.

And what he has decided, in the way a man decides things without noticing he is deciding them, is that something has gone wrong with him. That he has run dry. That the tank he has been drawing on for eleven years is finally empty and this is what that looks like.

And that is you at your own red light, or you would have closed this by now.

Paul assumed this would happen and wrote down what happens next

Here is the passage, and I want you to notice that it is not written as an emergency.

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.Romans 8:26

Read the first three words. Likewise. The Spirit helps.

Paul is not introducing a crisis measure. He is in the middle of a long passage about the whole creation groaning and about waiting, and he drops this in as though it were simply how the arrangement works, because it is.

And look at what he says the problem is.

Not: we do not feel like praying. Not: we have grown cold. He says we do not know what to pray for as we ought. That is a limitation, not a failure. It is the ordinary condition of a person who is not God trying to speak to God about things too big for him.

You have not run dry, and what happened at that red light is written into the passage as the normal state of a praying person. It is written that we do not know what to pray for as we ought (Romans 8:26), and as we ought is the phrase, which means the shortfall is in the knowing and not in the wanting. The Holy Spirit is the One Paul says is already handling it.

Now the second half, and it is the sentence I most want you to have.

The Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.

Too deep for words. Not: instead of your words, once you have run out. Not: better words that you could learn. Deeper than the level where words operate at all.

You are being prayed for at a depth your nine minutes never reached, and it has been happening underneath the list for eleven years. It is written that the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26), and Himself is the word Paul chose. The Holy Spirit was doing that on the mornings the list was warm and He was doing it on Tuesday at the red light.

And here is the thing about your sister.

You have said her name every morning for eleven years. On Tuesday you got the name out and nothing followed it, and you drove away thinking you had failed her.

You said her name. In the presence of Somebody who is interceding with groanings too deep for words.

Your sister was prayed for on Tuesday and you were not the one who had to find the words. It is written that He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God (Romans 8:27). The Holy Spirit carried a name that had nothing behind it, and the Father who searches hearts received it.

I am not going to tell you what the ten days mean. I do not know and nobody writing anything knows, and a page that hands you a diagnosis of your own soul on the strength of a dry fortnight is a page to be wary of.

You are not required to produce anything for this to be true. It is written that the Spirit helps us in our weakness (Romans 8:26), and helps is a word that assumes somebody who cannot manage on their own. The Holy Spirit does not need you back on form first.