The File That Has Not Moved In That Office

There is a green folder on the shelf above the microwave, and it is the tidiest thing in the house.

Everything in it is in order. Everything has been in order for a long time. References, forms, the letter from the doctor, the photocopy of the photocopy, all of it in plastic wallets because she bought plastic wallets specially, back when buying plastic wallets felt like progress.

She rings on a Wednesday because Wednesday is the day the woman is in. The woman is kind. The woman says there is nothing on the system yet and she will chase it, and she means it, and she has meant it for a long time now.

Her husband has stopped asking when she comes off the phone. Not out of coldness. Out of mercy. He can tell from the way she puts the phone face down on the counter, and he just puts the kettle on instead, and they have a whole conversation in that kettle.

They have prayed. They want that noted, both of them, standing in a kitchen with a folder above the microwave. They prayed in the car park the first time. They prayed properly, out loud, with friends, and then privately, and then in the shorter sentences people pray when a thing has gone on a while, and then sometimes just the word please.

And on Sunday somebody kind, somebody who has never done anything but love them, said: have you two thought about fasting over it?

They said they would think about it. They have thought of very little else. And what they heard underneath a genuinely loving sentence was that after all this, there was still one more thing they had not done, and that a drawer in an office thirty miles away might somehow be theirs to open.

If you are the one who puts the phone face down on the counter, come and sit with me a minute.

Nobody is scoring the way you ask

Settle it now, because otherwise every paragraph after this will land on a braced shoulder.

You have not prayed this wrongly, and you are not being held up while heaven waits for a better sentence. That is not a comfort I am offering you across a counter. It is written, that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit has been carrying every one of those short Wednesday prayers into a place your own words were never going to reach.

Something happens to people who love a child they have not met. The love arrives fully formed and has nowhere to go, so it turns into administration. Prayer becomes another item on the list of things being chased. And then somebody kind, who would be horrified to know it, adds one more item.

What God says He does with the alone

There is a line in the Psalms that is not a promise about paperwork and is something better than that.

God setteth the solitary in families.Psalm 68:6

Look at the verb. Not permits. Not eventually arranges. Sets.

That is a sentence about the character of God, not about the speed of an office. It tells you what He is like and what He is inclined toward, and it was true of Him long before anybody invented a form.

You are not the one who has to make God care about this, because He was pointed at it before you ever were. I am not making that up for a woman with a folder above her microwave: it is the plain sense of what David wrote (Psalm 68:6), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who makes it something you can lean your whole weight on at a counter on a Wednesday.

So what is fasting, if it is not the thing that finally moves a file?

A much smaller answer, and a much better one

Fasting is not a payment, not a lever, not the piece that has been missing, and not information sent to a God who had not heard. It is the body brought into a prayer that was already going up. It is the whole of a person, including the part that gets hungry and tired and rings a number on a Wednesday, turning toward God with empty hands.

You will not find a plan here. No length, no kind, nothing to follow, no build up and nothing to complete. A plan would turn this straight back into a transaction, and a transaction is exactly what has been quietly wearing you out.

Now something that gets said out in the open rather than in a footnote. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. If you live with diabetes, if you are pregnant or trying to be, if you take medication, if you have ever had a hard relationship with eating, if you are underweight, unwell, or simply not sure, speak to your doctor before you go without anything, and let their answer stand as the answer. You are not one step further from God because of what a doctor said. Scripture says the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the Holy Spirit has never arrived in a smaller measure in anybody's kitchen on account of a body.

And if this week is heavier than a page can hold, if you are frightened for yourself, put this down and ring somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anyone near you is in danger tonight. That is not a detour around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.