It is thirty-one spaces, a ticket machine that eats coins, and a low wall on the north side that is original.
Tomás drives through it every Thursday because it is the fastest way to the depot, and he has done for nine years, and there was a stretch in the middle where he did not think about it at all.
Then his aunt died and there was a box.
In the box, among other things, was a photograph of that square with people in it. Not a few. Full. Wall to wall, standing, with more of them up on the steps of the building that is now offices, and on the back in pencil in a hand he does not recognize is a date and four words.
He has looked at it a great deal since.
He asked his mother and she said her mother had talked about it: something that ran for several weeks, and the shops closing early on the Tuesdays, and a man who stood on the low wall on the north side because there was nowhere else to stand.
The low wall on the north side is still there. He parks against it sometimes.
And what has happened since the box is that Thursdays have changed. He drives in through the same entrance and out through the same exit and it takes about ninety seconds, and something comes over him in the middle of it that he has not managed to name properly, and which he has certainly never said out loud.
The nearest he has got is this: it feels like standing in a room where a party finished a long time ago and nobody put the chairs away.
He is not sentimental. He would not want the square back the way it was and he knows a car park is genuinely useful.
But there is a flatness in the middle of every Thursday now, and under the flatness is a question with an edge on it. Something happened here and it stopped. And things that stop, in Tomás's experience, generally stop for a reason, and he has begun, without meaning to, to look for the reason in this town, and in his own family, and once, badly, at four in the morning, in himself.
And you may drive through your own square. A building, a road, a house, a hall that is a carpet showroom now. And you may have felt exactly that flatness and never once said it out loud.
The prophet does not explain it, he asks for it again
Let me take something off you before anything else, because you have carried it since that box and it was never yours.
You are not looking at a judgement. Neither is your town. You never were. Scripture gives you a man standing in front of exactly this and shows you what he does with it, and it is not diagnosis, and it is the Holy Spirit, not any accounting of yours, who governs when God moves. Set that down here against the low wall. It is heavy, and it has been riding with you every Thursday since.
Now hear him, because he had the same problem and better information than you.
Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known.Habakkuk 3:2
Look at what he does with the old accounts.
He does not analyze why the deeds stopped. He does not construct a theory about his generation, and he was living in a considerably worse one than yours. He takes what he has heard and he turns it straight into a request. Repeat them in our day.
That is a prayer, not a verdict. It is the only useful thing to do with a photograph.
And it is available to you. Right now, in a car, in a car park, on a Thursday. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who decides where and when, and He has never once left a man a reason list to work through instead.
Now let me be careful, because there are ditches on both sides.
Nothing here says it did not happen or that the photograph is exaggerated. Something did happen in that square. Your grandmother remembered the shops shutting early, and that is a real detail and real details are how you know.
And nothing here promises you a repeat. I cannot promise that and I will not try. Nobody arranged what happened on those steps, nobody earned it, and its not happening since is not a verdict on this town or your family or you at four in the morning. Scripture never once makes it anybody's fault, and it is His Spirit who moves as He chooses.
Here is the tender part, and it is where the four in the morning goes. You have been treating a stop as a consequence.
That is a reasonable instinct in most of life. Things generally do stop for reasons. But it does not transfer here, and Scripture will not let you build the ladder in either direction: nobody climbed up to it and nobody knocked it over.
His word puts a prayer in the prophet's mouth instead of an explanation, and His Spirit is the one who answers or does not, and neither of them ever handed you the file.
So here is the turn, and it is small, and it is not about the square.
Say the old prayer, in your own words, over the road you live on.
That is the whole of it. Name your street. Name two houses on it. Ask Him to do in your day what He has done before, and then stop.
Not about the square. Not about the town. About eleven meters of pavement and two front doors, out loud, today.
You are able for that now, exactly as things are. His word puts repeat them in our day in a man's mouth in a far worse generation, and His Spirit is the one who moves where He chooses, and neither of them ever required a better century first.
I am not going to tell you He will do it here, or when, or what it would look like if He did. That belongs entirely to God, in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so a page can finish well. And the ninety-odd quiet years are not on you, or your mother, or this town. They never were.
What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is the same prayer the prophet had and a street with a name.
Drive through the square. Then go home and say your own road out loud.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing at your own door, out loud, on an ordinary evening. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was yours on every Thursday through that car park. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Flatness that comes over me at ninety seconds through the square, you are a party nobody cleared up and you have never once been a verdict. In the name of Jesus I drive out the far side of you, because He has done this before and He can do it here.
- Instinct that a stop must be a consequence, you took me to four in the morning looking for a reason in myself, and you are not being given the file again. Scripture puts a prayer in the prophet's mouth and not an explanation, and nobody climbed up to that square and nobody knocked it over.
- Lord, I have heard of Your fame and I stand in awe of Your deeds, and Your Spirit is the one who repeats them where He chooses. I am not despising the quiet years while I wait, and I am saying my own road out loud to You tonight.
Habakkuk 3:2
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