He Saved Me, Not Somebody Else

The disappointment arrived on the second morning, which she thinks is probably a record.

The first morning was fine. The first morning she woke up and remembered, and lay there for a bit, and there was a lightness about the whole day that she still thinks about.

The second morning she woke up and heard herself, before she was properly conscious, being sarcastic in her own head about somebody. Same voice. Same speed. Same target, which was a woman at work who had done nothing except exist near her.

And she lay there and thought: oh.

Six years on, Priya is thirty-four and the inventory has not changed much. She still talks too much when she is nervous. She is still the one who says the thing everybody was thinking and then feels sick about it for two days. She still cannot let a small unfairness go, in traffic, in a line at a store, anywhere. Her laugh is the same laugh, which she has never liked.

She was not expecting perfection. She wants to be clear about that, because people always assume she was being naive, and she was not. She was expecting a different person. Milder. Quieter. The kind of woman who is described as gracious. And what she got, six years running, is herself, with a Bible.

So she has landed on a conclusion, and she holds it lightly enough to function and firmly enough that it colors everything: whatever the new creation business means, it did not really happen to her, because here she demonstrably is.

If you woke up as yourself, hear the question first. Which verse promised you somebody else?

Workmanship is a word about material

For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.Ephesians 2:10

We are his workmanship. The word behind that is the one we get poem from, and it means a made thing, a piece of work, something crafted by an artisan.

And here is what an artisan does, and does not do. An artisan works with material. A potter works with clay, a joiner works with the grain that is in front of him, and the whole skill is in what the material actually is. A joiner who wanted a different plank would go and get a different plank.

Priya has been waiting to be swapped for a different plank. The verse says she is being worked.

You are His workmanship, and you are already the material He selected, and the artisan was never planning on a substitution. I am not consoling a woman about her personality. It is written in Ephesians 2:10, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a word about crafted work and lays it on somebody who has been waiting six years to be somebody else.

The same material, differently directed

And now the thing that will actually shift her, because it is about the specific traits she despises.

She says the thing everybody was thinking. That is on her list of faults and it is the same faculty that makes her the person the younger women at that church talk to, because she is the only one who will say the true thing in a room where everybody else is being careful.

She cannot let a small unfairness go. Also on the list. Also the reason she is the only person in her office who noticed what was happening to the woman on the night shift and did something about it.

She talks too much when she is nervous. And she is the one who fills the silence when a family arrives at a funeral and nobody knows what to do.

The material has not been replaced. It is being directed. Some of it needs the plane run over it, and that is real, and she will spend her life on that. But God did not save her in order to obtain a milder woman. There are plenty of mild women and He is not short.

You are being directed rather than replaced, and it is already the same material under new hands. Scripture says we are created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God has before ordained that we should walk in them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who aims a temperament rather than confiscating it.

What actually changed on the second morning

And one more thing, which she has never counted because it happened so fast.

On the second morning she heard herself being sarcastic in her own head, and she noticed.

Six years ago that sentence would have gone through her without touching the sides. She would have thought it, enjoyed it slightly, and gone to make coffee. What happened on that second morning was that a familiar thought arrived and something in her turned and looked at it.

That is not a small thing. That is the arrival of a new inhabitant, and she has been reading it as evidence of failure because it came packaged with the failure it was noticing.

You are already able to see what you could not see before, and the seeing is itself the new thing. It is written that we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the noticing in a person the second before they get out of bed.