The six ten is not full. That is the thing about the six ten. Twelve or fourteen people, most mornings, all of them in the same seats.
She has been on it four years. Nearside, three rows back, because the heater under that seat works and the one across the aisle does not.
Two seats ahead, on the other side, there is a woman.
She gets on two stops later. She is somewhere in her fifties. She wears a work polo shirt under a coat, so she is going to a job with a uniform, and she carries a canvas bag with the handle mended with tape.
And she cries.
Not every morning. Perhaps two mornings in five. It is completely silent and she does not wipe her face, she just looks straight ahead out of the front window with the tears running, and then somewhere around the ring road she stops, and by the time the bus gets in she is normal.
Four years.
Something like four hundred mornings of a woman crying two seats ahead, and four hundred mornings of another woman looking out of the side window at the same three roundabouts.
She has thought about it constantly. She has composed things to say. She has decided, several times, that today is the day, and then the bus has filled up slightly, or the woman has got on already crying which somehow makes it harder, or she has simply not moved.
And in the fourth year, a sentence has arrived and settled and she has not challenged it: it would be an intrusion.
He came where he was
Everybody knows the story. A man is beaten and left on a road, two religious men pass by on the other side, and a Samaritan helps him. It gets preached as a story about compassion, which it is.
But read the actual hinge of it. It is four words and they are not about feeling.
But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he had compassion on him.Luke 10:33
Hear that three rows back. You are already on the road, which was the whole qualification. The word says a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the compassion once the distance goes.
Came where he was. And then, in that order, he saw him, and then he had compassion.
The compassion arrives after the proximity. Not before it. The two men who passed by on the other side did not lack feeling; they lacked distance. They stayed at a range where a man on the ground stays a situation rather than becoming a face.
And notice the Samaritan's qualification for the job. He was on that road. That is it. He was not a doctor, he was not from there, he had no standing and no training and no relationship with the man at all. He was simply on the same road going the same way and he came where he was.
So take this on your bus, and know it is not my sentiment, it is what is written: you are already on the road, five days a week, at six ten. His word says he came where he was and then saw him and then had compassion, and it is the Holy Spirit who has had you three rows back for four hundred mornings within reach of a woman with tape on her bag handle.
There was a preacher in England in the seventeen hundreds who went outside because the people he cared about were not in the buildings. Fields, market squares, pit heads at five in the morning.
And prisons, over and over, for fifty years, with people who could give him nothing at all and whose situations he mostly could not change.
He was not a rescuer. He did not fix most of what he saw. What he did was refuse to keep a comfortable distance from suffering that was not his fault and was not his business, and he built a movement out of ordinary people who did the same thing on their own streets.
He never spoke against the gathered church, which he loved and never left. He simply understood that passing by on the other side is a thing decent people do without noticing, and that closing the distance is a decision.
Two seats is not a long way. It is the whole distance in this story.
Move one seat.
And two seats is the entire distance in this story. His word says the Samaritan came where he was, and saw him, and had compassion, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the third of those once the first one is done.
Not tomorrow, when you have a sentence prepared. Tomorrow because it is tomorrow, and sit one seat nearer, on her side if you can, and say good morning.
That is the entire assignment. Good morning. Not: are you all right. Not: I have noticed. Not anything about crying, because a woman who cries silently on a bus and then stops by the ring road has chosen how to do this and it is not yours to name.
Just good morning, from two feet instead of eight, from a face she has seen four hundred times and has never once been spoken to by.
And do it again the next day, and the next. What you are building is not a conversation. It is a person: you become somebody rather than a passenger, and on some morning that you will not choose and cannot plan, a woman who has been crying alone on a bus for four years will have a face to turn to.
You are equipped for this right now, and I am not saying it to encourage you; it is written that he came where he was, and saw him, and had compassion, and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the compassion once the distance has gone, and not one second before.
The intrusion you are afraid of is not what this is. An intrusion is a stranger naming your grief. A good morning is a neighbor arriving.
You come where she is. You are already on that bus. You have been on it for four years, which means the only thing left to arrange is two seats.
You are already on the road, five mornings a week, at six ten, which was the Samaritan's entire qualification. His word says a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, and it is the Holy Spirit who has had you three rows back within reach of a woman with tape on her bag handle.
Declare this over yourself
- Side window and the three roundabouts, you are a place to put my eyes and you are not where I am looking anymore. His word says the Samaritan came where he was, so I move two seats in the name of Jesus.
- Sentence that settled in the fourth year, that speaking would be an intrusion, you have no seat on that bus. Scripture says he came, and he saw, and then he had compassion, and His Spirit supplies the compassion once the distance goes and not before.
- God, I come where she is and I am already on that bus. Your word says the man's whole qualification was that he was on that road, so I am on this road at six ten tomorrow, and good morning is the whole of what I owe.
Luke 10:33
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.
