I Cannot Lift My Eyes On Sunday

Denise has a way of standing in the eleven o'clock and she has never told anybody about it.

Third row from the back, aisle side, so that there is nobody on her left. Hands at about waist height, not raised, which nobody in that room would think twice about because plenty of people stand like that. Eyes on a spot on the carpet about four feet in front of her, a spot she could describe to you, a place where two pieces of the carpet meet and there is a slight difference in the pile.

She sings every word. She knows all of them. Her voice is fine.

And her chin does not come up.

It has been like that for two years and eight months, and here is the strange part, the part she cannot explain even to herself: she is not afraid of being found out. Nobody is looking for it and nobody suspects and nobody in that building has the faintest idea.

It is not fear. It is something closer to manners. It feels, to her, like the appropriate posture for a person who did what she did on Thursday to be standing in a room like this on a Sunday. Like keeping your voice down in a hospital. Like not sitting in the good chair.

She has stopped taking communion in the front. She goes at the end now, when the line is short.

And it has begun to spread, which is what has frightened her into reading something like this. She noticed last month that she does not look at the pastor's wife directly any more. Not avoiding her. Just not quite meeting her, which is a smaller thing and a worse one.

I am allowed to be here. I know I am allowed. I just cannot lift my face in here.

And here is where I stop talking about Denise, because you have a spot on your own carpet, and you have been standing in one place in a room full of people who love you, with your head at exactly the angle you have decided you deserve.

Let me say the first thing before anything else, and I am going to say it with no softening: the ducking is not humility. It has the shape of humility and it is doing the opposite work, because humility comes and stands in front of God and this thing keeps you at four feet of carpet.

The lifting is not your job

Let me set the strongest thing down first, because you have been trying for two years and eight months to lift your own face and it has not worked once. And it is the Holy Spirit who makes that land in you rather than merely read well.

Your head is not yours to lift. It was never your assignment. There is Somebody in Scripture whose actual, named work is doing it for you:

But You, O Lord, are a shield for me; my glory, and the lifter up of my head.Psalm 3:3

Take that title seriously, because it is a title and not a poetic flourish. God calls Himself the lifter up of the head. Not the one who explains to you why your head could theoretically be lifted. The one who does the lifting, with His own hands, as His own work.

And it is worth knowing where David wrote it. He was running from his own son. He had every reason on earth to be walking with his face down, and he does not say he found his dignity or talked himself round. He says God is the one who lifts it.

So the posture you have been holding is not required of you, and it is not owed by you, and Scripture is where I stand that rather than my own opinion, and God's Spirit is not standing behind you in the third row agreeing that four feet of carpet is about right. The Holy Spirit is the one carrying that into the room you are actually in.

What the ducking is costing the room

Now let me tell you what this is actually doing, because it is not only happening to you.

You have been treating your posture as a private arrangement between you and God. It is not private. It is in a room.

There is a woman in that congregation who is where you were three years ago and cannot say it to anybody. There is a girl of seventeen watching the women in that room to learn what a woman who loves God looks like. And what they see is a woman who sings every word with her chin down, and they draw the obvious conclusion, which is that this is what it looks like when you are carrying something.

I am not saying that to load you up. It is the opposite: it is the reason your head coming up is not vanity. It is service.

And here is the ground: you are already clean, and the cleanness did not arrive on the strength of a good week. That is written down, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it something you can stand up in on a Sunday rather than something you agree with on a Tuesday.

And the practical half, because a message without it has failed you: real help exists and none of it is small faith. A counselor who works with this specifically. A doctor if the low afterward has got heavy. One friend, chosen by you, told in daylight. And nobody has the right to make telling a leader in that building the price of your freedom. That may be right, with wisdom, in time. It is not a toll at a gate.