We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain,
Hebrews 6:19 (NIV)
Where This One Is Set
The lot is empty and lit all night, with four cars parked at the far edge where the people working inside leave them. A truck goes past on the road out front, and then nothing goes past for a long while.
Abraham waited a long time and then received what he had been promised. God had put an oath behind that promise, so the ones who inherited it would have two things underneath them that could not move, and the people reading this were somewhere in the middle of the same kind of waiting. They had run for it and taken hold of the hope set in front of them, and then the waiting went on.
We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. The picture runs the wrong way for an anchor. It goes inward, past the curtain, into the inner sanctuary, where Jesus had already gone in ahead of them.
At three in the morning a grocery store belongs to a seventeen-year-old and a floor scrubber. He takes it down aisle nine and back, the coolers kick on and off behind him, and he stopped checking the clock around two because checking it makes the night longer. The doors stay locked until six.
Firm and secure is said about the hope itself, and the fastening is at the far end, where the boy cannot get tonight. Whether he feels firm at three in the morning is a fact about three in the morning. Between two and four he will believe several things about his life that he will not believe at noon, and the far end does not loosen for any of them.
The night runs its full length either way. The fastening sits somewhere his mood cannot reach, put there by somebody who swore to it and cannot go back on it.
An anchor usually drops into water nobody can see the bottom of. This one is set inside the room that has already been walked into on his behalf.
A Prayer to Remember
I have nothing new to say to you tonight. The hours are not moving and nothing in me is answering, and you know that about this hour better than I do. Hold me to the oath. You swore it, and you cannot go back on it.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
