And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—
John 14:16 (NIV)
Another Advocate, Given to Stay
Ten past two, and forty lines on the board with nothing lit. Ray has worked nights on this exchange since he was twenty-six. He hears less than he did, much less on the left, and he’s arranged things so the fault belongs everywhere but there. The relief man mumbles, and so do the callers, and four headsets in a row have come out of the supply room defective.
The relief man is twenty-four and has been coming in two nights a week since spring to sit the second position. He takes the calls Ray doesn’t catch, and he takes them soft, half a second after the lamp goes, so that from the doorway it looks like Ray got there first. Nobody told him to do that. Around three Ray reaches over and pulls the kid’s headset cord out of the jack, holds it, and tells him that if he wants the job he can come ask for it instead of lifting it one call at a time. He drops the cord on the table. The kid doesn’t answer. Ray goes back to the board, and the sentence stays where he put it.
And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever. He’s asking the Father for one more, so there’s been a first, and what’s coming is of his sort. Jesus calls him the Spirit of truth and says he lives with you and will be in you. Help and company, named separately, and the company runs forever.
The men who hear it are in the room where he’s just told them he’s going away, and the promise still runs the whole length. He asks the Father for it, and the Father is the one who gives it. Nobody at that table asked for forever, and it was promised anyway, in a room where they were still asking him where he was going.
The board starts to light, and Ray works it down to the last lamp before he signs the log and goes out to the lot without looking at the second position. The kid stays on and takes the first call of the morning the same way he’s taken all of them. Who’s been taking your calls half a second after the lamp goes?
A Prayer to Remember
Thank you, Father, for another advocate, asked for by your Son and given by you. Thank you that he helps and that he stays, and that your Son said how long. Thank you for the Spirit of truth, who lives with your people and will be in them, and whom the world can’t see and doesn’t know.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
