James 1:6: Blown and Tossed

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.

James 1:6 (NIV)

Blown and Tossed

The truck comes onto the weighbridge in one movement and stops with the back axle inside the line. She’s nineteen. It’s her father’s truck, and his name is on the cab in letters that got repainted once and not again.

In the office the operator reads the gross off the screen, pulls a probe sample out of the trailer, and runs the moisture on it. Fourteen point eight. He writes the dock on the ticket and reads it back to her, and then he tells her the tare’s on the second line.

He asks after her father, using his first name. She gives the short answer she’s been giving all week, that they’ll know more on Monday. He worked for her father once and was let go, and she was small then and has no idea. So he runs her sample a second time, and the second time he writes down what the meter says.

Anybody short on wisdom is told to ask God, who gives generously to everyone and finds no fault, and it will be given. And when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. James adds that such a person shouldn’t expect to receive anything from the Lord, and the wave is still a picture of the asker.

For years I read this as a bar I had to clear before I was allowed to ask, and I held off asking for a long time. I read the order the other way now. James tells them to ask, and he attaches a warning to the asking. The doubter gets compared to a wave, and a wave goes wherever the wind takes it. The God being asked gives generously to everyone and finds no fault, and the warning about the wind stands next to that.

She pulls off the plate for the empty weigh and it’s through in under a minute. The tarp comes back over the trailer in one pull, and the corner goes down in her father’s knot, the only one she was ever taught.