Six Words at Third and Bell

Merle Kastner leaves his house at six oh four and is through the light at Third and Bell by twelve past.

Two winters running, there has been a man under the shelter on the corner waiting on the 6:20. Tall, canvas coat, a knit cap, hands shoved up his sleeves against the cold, standing the way a man stands when he has been standing a while.

Merle lifts two fingers off the top of the wheel. The man lifts his chin.

That is the entire relationship. Two winters of it. Three hundred and forty mornings, if you want to be exact, and Merle has never known that man's name, and that man has never known his.

And Merle has thought about pulling over. He would tell you honestly that he has thought about it four hundred times.

He has run the whole thing in his head at the light: roll the window down, say something, offer the man a ride, he is going that way anyhow. And every single time, the eleven seconds run out and the light goes green and Merle drives on to the plant thinking he will do it properly on a morning when he has more time.

He has been going to do it properly for two years.

Then came a Tuesday in February with ice on everything.

A bus had slid into the ditch out on the county road at five forty and the whole route was stacked up behind it, thirty-five minutes and counting. Merle came up to the light at twelve past and the shelter was still there and the man was still under it, and he was out at the curb looking up the street, and then back at his phone, and then up the street again.

The light was red.

And Merle Kastner did the thing he had thought about four hundred times.

He pulled over to the curb, rolled the window down, and said six words.

"Where you headed? I'm going that way."

The man looked at him for about a second, and then came around the front of the truck and got in.

His name is Alton. He does maintenance at the hospital on the far side of the river. His car has been in the shop since the middle of November and the part keeps not coming. He has a daughter who has recently taken up the clarinet, and she practices at six in the morning, and he says this like a man describing weather he cannot do anything about.

Eleven minutes.

Merle put him out at the corner by the hospital lot and Alton said thanks, man, and shut the door, and that was the whole of it.

And Merle drove the rest of the way to the plant with his hands going a little unsteady on the wheel and could not have told you why, because nothing had happened.

Except that two winters of a nod had turned into a name. And it had cost six words, eleven minutes, and a truck that was already going that way.

Who has despised the day of small things

Zerubbabel is rebuilding the temple, and the foundation he has managed to get down is so much smaller than the one the old men remember that some of them wept when they saw it.

Into the middle of that, God asks a question.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.Zechariah 4:10

A plummet is a weight on a string. That is all it is. A lump of lead on a line that a workman holds up beside a wall to find out whether the wall is true.

It is the smallest thing on that entire building site. It has no moving parts. A boy could carry ten of them.

You are not waiting to be handed something to be sent with. What is already in your hand at twelve past six is the plummet. That is not encouragement I am inventing to make a man feel useful. The written word puts the plumb line in a working man's fist and calls that the thing worth looking at, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an old line about a building site and lays it across a truck cab on a February morning.

Now read the strangest part of that verse, and read it slowly.

The eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth.

The whole earth. Every ocean, every capital, every crowd, every enormous thing happening anywhere on the planet right now. Those eyes go over all of it.

And what the verse says they stop on is a small tool in one man's hand.

You have been seen at that intersection. Scripture says the eyes of the Lord run through the whole earth and rest on a plummet, and the Spirit of God has been at that corner every morning that you have been at that corner, both winters, all three hundred and forty times.

Let me be plain about what this message is not doing, because this is exactly where a man gets loaded up.

I am not sending you anywhere. Nobody here is telling you to sign up for something, take on more, get up earlier, or feel bad about the two winters. Nothing about this costs a dollar and nothing about it makes you a bigger man on Wednesday than Monday found you. And I am not going to make anything picturesque out of a cold morning, that man's or yours. A February curb is not a poem.

The whole of it is this: the ordinary road you already drive is the road, and the thing already in your hand is the thing.

And I want to say something honest about the four hundred times, because I do not think what stopped you was selfishness.

Here is what actually stopped you. The moment is about eleven seconds long. Eleven seconds is not enough time to do a thing properly, and you are a man who likes to do things properly, so you told yourself you would do it right on a morning with more room in it. And the light went green. And a man can run that exact loop for two winters without ever once being a bad man.

It is already in your hands, and it always was. The word of God never asked Zerubbabel for a bigger tool, and the Holy Spirit has never once required a man to have more before He would use what he had.

Six words. That is what the whole thing came to.

Not a speech. Not a plan. Not a program with a name. Six words out a truck window, and a name where there had been a nod.

Right now, as you read this, you are being shown what you are holding and not handed something new to hold. The written word calls a lump of lead on a string worth the attention of the eyes that run through the whole earth, and it is the Holy Spirit who is putting that in front of you this morning instead of some other morning.