The Same Half Mile

Effie walks the same half mile.

Out of the gate at the end of her road, along the top of the field, down the steps that are always wet, along the shore path as far as the second bench, and back. About twenty-five minutes if she does not stop, which she always does.

She has done it nearly every day for six years. In hail. On the morning of her brother's funeral. Twice on the day the boiler went.

And she is slightly embarrassed about it.

There is a walking group in that village, and they do proper walks: eleven miles over the tops, maps, boots, a pub at the end. They have asked her three times. And she has said no three times, and given three different reasons, and the actual reason is that she thinks a woman who has walked half a mile eleven hundred times has not really been walking.

She said something like that out loud in October, to Marguerite, who used to teach and cannot help herself.

Marguerite stopped on the path and said, "Say that again."

Effie said it was only ever the same half mile, that was all.

And Marguerite said: "Effie. You know where the first snowdrops come up. You told me in January and you were right to the day. You know which of those steps goes green in the wet and which one is safe. You knew the peregrine was back before the ranger did. You told me last year that there was something wrong with the second ash before anybody else could see it, and they took it down in March."

Then she said the thing.

"You have not walked a small walk eleven hundred times. You have walked one place all the way down. There is not a person in that group who knows anything the way you know this."

Now let me ask you about your three.

Because you have three. Or four, or two. The ones that opened. The ones that were there in the bad year and that you have gone back to every night since, until you know exactly where the comma is and how the second half turns.

And you are a bit ashamed of it. You have got a whole Bible and you keep going to the same page. You have listened to people talk about Habakkuk and Ephesians and the minor prophets and you have thought, quietly, that you are not really a person who reads the Bible. You are a person who reads three verses.

To whom would you go

There is a moment in John where a great many people walk away from Jesus at once, and He turns to the twelve and asks whether they are going too.

Simon Peter answered Him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life."John 6:68

Look at what Peter has, and look at what he does not have.

He does not have a system. He has not read Romans, because it has not been written. He could not give you a doctrine of anything. He is a fisherman standing on a lakeside with almost no material.

What he has is a small number of things he is certain of, worn smooth by living beside them, and he says them out loud when it counts.

You have words of eternal life. That is his three verses. And it holds him when a crowd is leaving.

So hear this over you, tonight, with your same page open again. You are not a person with a small Bible, you are a person who has worn a path into a few true things, and that is exactly what Peter is standing on. That is written down, and it is the Holy Spirit who chose which words would open for you in that year and who has been meeting you on that path ever since.

Now let me name what actually happened, because it was not a failure of discipline.

Those verses did not open because you were clever about them. They opened because you needed them at a moment when you had nothing, and something in them came out to meet you, and after that they were not text any more, they were a place.

That is why the others stayed shut. Not because you were lazy with them. Because you have not needed them yet.

And that is how it works, and it is how it has always worked. Scripture is not a syllabus to be completed. It is a country, and people come to know the part they live in first. The written word says His word is a lamp to the feet, which is a small light on the next step and not a floodlight on the whole map, and the Spirit of God gives what is needed when it is needed rather than distributing everything at once.

You are not behind. You are deep in one place.

Let me guard the other side of this, because it would be a shame to leave you there.

Six years is a long time on half a mile, and Effie should probably go on one of those walks.

Not because her half mile was insufficient. Because there is a whole coast, and she would love it, and she would bring to it a way of seeing that nobody else in that group has, and she would notice things on their eleven miles that they have walked past for years.

Same with you. Read something new this month, not to correct a deficiency but because you have earned an eye for it. What you learned on those three verses is not something you leave behind when you go elsewhere. It is what you take.

There was a man five hundred years ago who spent his whole life on a handful of things: a few chapters of Romans, a few of Galatians, one line about the just living by faith. He read everything, and he was one of the most learned men in Europe, and the shape of his life was still one short path walked ten thousand times until he knew every stone of it.