The Water Came In Twice

The sofa is on the grass on its end and there is a mark on the wall of the house that tells you exactly where it stopped, and it is higher than last time by about the width of a hand.

Neighbors are here. That is the thing that gets you, actually, more than the water. Four of them, and one has brought a van, and the man from two doors down who nobody really knows has been going in and out for an hour without being asked to.

Twenty two months since the last one.

After that one they did the doorway. All of them, the whole family, standing in the front door on a Sunday afternoon in the spring with the sun on the path, and his wife's mother said the words and everybody said amen and the youngest thought it was funny and was told, gently, that it was not.

They prayed over that door. They asked for covering. That was the word that got used, covering, and it was used about eleven times in about four minutes, and everybody meant it.

And on Thursday night the water came up the same path and through the same door and it went further into the house than it went the first time.

He is carrying a chest of drawers out with the man from two doors down and neither of them is saying anything, and the thing turning over in him is not about the furniture.

It is that he does not know how to say the word covering again. In front of his own children. On the same doorstep.

If you have prayed over a threshold and watched it be crossed anyway, you know that path. And you know what it does to a man: not doubt about God, exactly, but a specific fear of saying the same thing out loud a second time in front of people who heard him say it the first time.

The word, and then the one that says when

Let me pick up the other end of that chest of drawers and say the plain thing on the way out to the van.

The problem is not the water. The water is insurance and drying and eleven weeks of a dehumidifier and you have done it once and you know the shape of it. The problem is a word you said out loud in front of your children on a spring afternoon, and the fear that saying it again would be teaching them something false.

So let me put the word straight first, and then give you the verse.

Blessed does not mean the water stays out. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking, and there is no version of it anywhere that functions as flood defense, and pretending otherwise would be the thing that actually taught your children something false.

Now the verse, and I want you to look at one word in it, because the whole thing turns on it.

When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.Isaiah 43:2

When.

Not if. Not lest. When. It is written as a certainty about the water and a certainty about the company, and the two are in the same sentence, and the sentence assumes the passing through rather than promising the going round.

And then look at what is promised. I will be with thee. That is the whole of the first clause. The promise is a presence, not a barrier.

You are inside the exact verse rather than outside it, and the verse begins with the word when. Isaiah 43:2 assumes the waters and promises the company, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the way that promise operates now, standing on a wet path with a chest of drawers.

What covering actually means

Now the word your wife's mother used, because it is a good word and it has been damaged in your hearing and it is worth getting back.

Covering in Scripture is not a roof. It is not a force field. It is used of a hand over somebody, of wings over somebody, of a shadow over somebody in heat, and every single one of those images is about a person being close rather than a hazard being removed.

He covered Moses with His hand while He passed by. That is the picture. A hand over a man while something enormous goes past. The something still goes past.

Which means the prayer on that doorstep was not wrong and it was not unanswered, it was misunderstood by everybody standing there including the woman saying it, and that is not anybody's fault. The word means what it means in the book and the book is not shy about what happens to covered people.

You have been covered in the way the word actually means, which is a hand over a family rather than a wall around a house. Scripture uses covering of wings and a hand and a shadow rather than of a barrier, and it is the Holy Spirit who is that nearness now, so what was asked for on that path was given and was not what anybody in the family thought they were asking for.

And here is what happened on Thursday night that is worth counting. Everybody got out. The children are with their aunt. Four neighbors and a man from two doors down are in your house right now moving your furniture without being asked. Your wife's mother rang at half past six on Friday morning.

None of that is compensation for a flood and I am not offering it as such. But it is the shape of a hand over a family, and it is exactly what Isaiah 43 promises and exactly not what you were expecting to be promised.

You have had company through the water twice, and company is what was actually written down. Isaiah 43:2 says I will be with thee before it says anything else, and it is His Spirit who is the presence in a house with the carpet up.

What to say in front of your children

Now the real question, because it is not theological, it is that you have to stand on that doorstep again eventually.

Do not say covering the way it was said in the spring. Not because it was wrong, but because in that house it now means a promise about water, and if you use it again it will teach them what you are afraid of teaching them.

Say the verse instead, and say the whole of it, including the word when. Children can carry that. Children carry honest things far better than adults think and they carry dishonest ones very badly and for a long time.

Tell them, out loud, that you prayed and the water came and God was with you in it, and that all three of those are true, and that the third one is the one the book actually promised.

You are able to say something true on that doorstep that will still be true after a third flood, and that is the only kind of sentence worth teaching a child. Isaiah 43 gives the when and the company in one line, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an honest sentence hold in a family better than a hopeful one.

And I am not going to tell you it does not happen again. Twice in two years is a pattern and you know it and your children know it. Talk to the flood people, get the survey done, ask about the scheme, put it in writing. That is what a man does and it has nothing to do with faith.