Sorry Is Not a Direction

Four thousand two hundred and nine.

That is roughly what it comes to, if you say the same sorry every night for eleven and a half years and you only miss the nights you fall asleep in the chair with the television on.

He worked it out once on the back of a delivery slip, sitting in the van outside a house he was not delivering to. Then he was so appalled by the number that he apologized for the number as well.

Here is how it runs. The house goes quiet around half past eleven. He sits on the edge of the bed with his boots still on, because taking the boots off feels like settling in, and settling in feels like something he has not earned. And he opens the same conversation he has been opening since he was twenty seven. He names the thing. He names what it cost. He names the person it cost it from, and he says her name properly, out loud, because saying it properly is the only part of the whole business that still hurts the right amount.

He is not faking. That is what makes it so cruel. Every single one of those four thousand nights he meant it, with his whole chest, and the meaning was never once the problem.

Then he lies down. And in the morning he is standing on the exact same square foot of carpet, facing the exact same wall, in the exact same direction he was facing eleven and a half years ago.

Eleven years of feeling terrible, and not one step of it went anywhere.

Then comes the night the list runs out early. He gets to the end of the sentences quicker than usual and there is nothing left to add, and in the gap, in that awful quiet, he becomes aware of something he has been too busy to notice for a decade.

The room is not empty.

It has never once been empty. There has not been a single night of the four thousand where he was talking into an empty room and waiting to be let back in.

He has been apologizing, night after night, to Someone who was already sitting on the end of the bed.

The word underneath return is a travel word

Alright. Put the list down.

I know what your nights sound like, because you have got a version of that room, and I would not insult you by pretending the sorrow in it is fake. It is not fake. It is the realest thing you own. You have carried it faithfully, and nobody has ever thanked you for it, and I am not about to take it off you by telling you that you did repentance wrong.

I am going to tell you something better than that. What you have been doing is grief. Grief is holy work and it is not the same thing as the turn, and the reason you are exhausted is that you have been trying to get somewhere by feeling worse. So hear the better thing plainly. You are on the road the moment your face moves, and that is not my kindness toward you, it is what is written in the prophets. The Holy Spirit did not come into this room to grade your sorrow. He came to walk you.

So look at what the prophet actually says.

Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.Hosea 6:1

Return. It is a travel word. It is what you say about a road, not about a mood. Nobody in that sentence is being asked to feel more sorry. They are being asked to turn around and walk, and the whole verse assumes there is a place to walk toward, and Someone standing in it.

And look at the two smallest words in it. Let us. It is plural, and it is an invitation, and it is spoken by somebody who is going too. You are not the first person on this road tonight. You are not even the hundredth. If this is your first turn, the road is open. If this is your hundredth turn, and you know exactly which one this is, the road is the same road and it has not narrowed by one inch since the first time you stood on it. Hosea 6:1 is where that invitation is written down, and the same Spirit who put let us into the prophet's mouth is saying it over your kitchen tonight.

Now let me show you where the pressure comes off.

The prophet Joel is standing in front of a nation that has genuinely wrecked things. Locusts, ruin, a day of darkness. And into that, God says two words that should not be allowed.

Yet even now, declares the Lord, return to me with all your heart, with fasting, with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your hearts and not your garments. Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love.Joel 2:12 to 13

Yet even now. After all of it. Not once the damage is repaired. Not once you have proved a stretch of good behavior long enough to be taken seriously. Even now, which means tonight, which means from where you are actually standing and not from where you keep promising to be standing. That is God's own sentence and not a soft reading of it, and it is the Spirit of God who makes yet even now land as tonight rather than as a verse about somebody else.

And then: rend your hearts and not your garments. Tearing your coat was the visible grief in that world. It was the thing everybody in the street could see you doing. God says stop tearing the coat.

Sit with that, because it is aimed at you. He is not asking you for a better performance of sorrow. He never was. He is asking for the person inside the performance, and the nightly display you have been mounting for four thousand nights was never the entry fee, because there was never an entry fee. You are the one He is asking for, exactly as you are sitting. That is what is written, not what I would like to be true, and His Spirit is what carries a person out of the performance and into being wanted.

And notice the reason He gives. Look at the word for. Return, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The reason to turn is His character. Not your improvement. Not your track record. Not the strength of tonight's remorse. Paul says the same thing flat out in his letter to Rome: it is the kindness of God that leads you to repentance. The kindness comes first and does the leading. Regret has never led anybody anywhere, because regret has no legs.

Which brings me to the boy in the far country, and I want you to watch what happens to his speech.

He works it out on the road. Three lines: I have sinned, I am not worthy to be called your son, make me one of your hired workers. He rehearses it the whole way home, the way you rehearse yours.

He gets two lines out.

While he was still a long way off, his father saw him, and ran, and fell on his neck. And the son starts the speech, and he says I have sinned and I am not worthy, and then the father is already shouting for the best robe and the ring and the sandals, and the third line never gets said. Make me a hired worker never makes it out of his mouth. There is no room in that reunion for a demotion, because the father has already settled the question of what he is.

The son had a plan to become staff. The father had a party to run.

Hear me: the running started while he was still a long way off. Not at the door. Not once the apology was assessed and approved. The distance was still enormous and the father was already coming, which means the turn and the welcome were happening at the same time, in opposite directions, on the same road.

That is why sorry is not a direction and turning is. Sorry stands still and grieves. Turning moves, and the moment it moves it finds out the road runs both ways.