Waiting for a Ceremony Nobody Is Holding

Adaeze has been waiting three and a half years for a moment that was never in anybody's diary.

She could not have described it if you had asked her directly. It was never a plan. It was more like a shape at the back of her mind: that at some point somebody with standing would say something, out loud, in front of people, and the thing would be over.

Not a big service. Nothing grand. Just a sentence, said by the right person, in a room with other people in it, that made it official.

And in three and a half years there has been no such sentence, because nobody is planning one, because as far as everybody else is concerned it was over a long time ago and there is nothing left to announce.

Here is what waiting for it has actually done, which is the reason this is worth a whole message.

Waiting has kept her provisional.

You cannot fully take up a place while you are waiting to be given it. So she has been in a holding pattern that looks, from outside, exactly like humility: she does not put herself forward, she does not assume, she checks first, she has said no to two things she would have been good at, on the grounds that it might be too soon.

Too soon for what. That is the question nobody has ever put to her.

There is no clock. Nobody set a period. The only person operating a timetable in this entire situation is her, and the timetable has no end date on it because it was never written down by anybody.

And there is a second thing the waiting has done, which is quieter and worse.

It has made other people's ordinary treatment of her feel provisional too. When somebody asks her to do something, she hears an implied question in it: are you ready, is this all right, are we sure. Nobody is asking any of that. They are asking her to do a thing because she is good at it and they need it done, which is what people have always meant when they ask.

But a person in a holding pattern hears everything as an assessment, because a person in a holding pattern is expecting one.

And this is where I stop writing about Adaeze, because you have been waiting for something to be said.

I am not going to ask what happened. That is yours and it stays yours.

The status changed without a service

I want to give you a sentence that is a legal announcement, and I want you to notice that no event is attached to it anywhere.

Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.Galatians 4:7

Thou art. Present tense, stated as a fact already in force.

Paul is not describing something that will happen at a future gathering. He is not saying that a moment is coming. He is telling people what is currently true about their standing, and the whole letter is written to a group who had begun trying to earn a position they already held.

That is your situation exactly, and Galatians 4:7 addresses it without one word about a ceremony.

So take that where you have been waiting. You are no more a servant and you are a son, and Galatians 4:7 says it in the present tense, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a person able to live inside a status that was never announced in public.

Now look at the two words and how far apart they are.

A servant in that household is a real member of it. Housed, fed, trusted, given work, and nobody is unkind to a servant. What a servant does not have is a claim. Everything they enjoy is at the pleasure of somebody else, and it can be reviewed.

A son has a claim. The word heir in the second half is the giveaway: an heir does not hold a position by permission, and nothing about it is provisional.

And here is the part that will free you from the diary. A status conferred by God does not require a human announcement to be in force. The written word states it and does not schedule anything, and the Spirit of God has been treating you as a son for three and a half years while you have been waiting for a room to be told.