They Are Fast And I Am Not

They go like water. That is the only way to describe it.

Round a corner, back again, up onto a wall, off it, forty yards ahead and then suddenly beside you asking a question, and gone again.

And you love it. That is the thing worth saying first. There is nothing in you that wants them to be slower.

But you cannot go at that speed, and about eight months ago you started saying no to things, and the reason you gave was tiredness, and the actual reason was that you did not want to be the thing that had to be accommodated.

So there is a version of an afternoon where they run and you are with them, and a version where they run and you are at home, and you have been choosing the second one to protect them from the first.

Even to hoar hairs will I carry you

There is a promise in Isaiah that goes further into old age than most people notice.

And even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you: I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver. (Isaiah 46:4, King James Version)

Even to hoar hairs will I carry you.

Read the verbs. Made, bear, carry, deliver. Four of them, all of them God's, and not one of them asks the person for anything.

And read who it is addressed to. Not the strong. Not the useful. Specifically and by name, the old, at the point where hair has gone white, which is the exact demographic everybody else stops writing for.

You are the person that promise names, and it was never the capable who were being addressed in that verse. Isaiah 46:4 speaks directly to old age and to white hair without a single condition attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as being wanted rather than as being managed.

And notice the word carry. Not accompany. Not support. Carry, which is the word for what you do with something that cannot go by itself, and God uses it about somebody He is not embarrassed by.

You have a God who uses the word carry without any awkwardness in it, and it was never shameful to be somebody who is carried. The written word puts the carrying and the delivering in the same breath, and the Spirit of God is what takes the word burden out of an old man's arithmetic.

What you are actually protecting them from

Now let me name what the no is for, because it is not tiredness.

It is a picture of a moment where one of them has to wait, and look back, and adjust, and the thought of being the reason for it is unbearable.

So you stay in, and they go with somebody else, and they go fast, and nobody has to accommodate anybody.

And here is what that costs, and I say it plainly because plain speaking has been earned here. They do not get you. They get an afternoon that runs at their own speed and contains nobody who was born in a different decade, and the wall you did not want them to have to slow down for is the same wall they would have stopped at with you. Being carried is not the same as being a burden, and staying in is not a smaller answer than going out.

You are not the thing that spoils an afternoon, and it was never an accommodation that anybody was being asked to make. Isaiah 46 names the old age directly and promises carrying without a hint of reluctance, which is exactly why the Spirit of God will not let a man protect his grandchildren from himself.

And the thing about children running is that they do not run away. They run out and back, out and back, and the returning is most of it. A fixed point they can come back to is not a drag on that. It is what makes it possible.

Be the fixed point for ten minutes

So the practical part, and it is a change of position rather than of pace.

Go out with them for ten minutes and be the fixed point.

You are able to go at the pace you have, and it has never once required matching anybody to be genuinely out with them. The passage promises the carrying to somebody who cannot go on their own, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with an older man walking slowly down his own street.

You walk. They run. They come back. They go. That is the shape of it and it has been the shape of it for as long as there have been grandparents and children on the same street.

Do not apologize for the pace. Do not say go on ahead. Do not make a remark about being slow, which is the version that invites everybody to agree.

And on the days when even ten minutes is not there, stay in, and let it stand clean, because a promise made to hoar hairs is not withdrawn on the days a man cannot walk.

You are permitted the day at home as much as the day on the street, and one of them has never once been the failed version of the other. Isaiah 46:4 puts four verbs on God's side and none on yours, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with a man in a chair as much as with a man on a sidewalk.