Ten Minutes in the Parking Lot

Four men have eaten at the Ridgeline Diner on Thursday nights for eleven years.

Deke, who talks the most. Marty, who is quiet until he is not. Gil, who has never in his life ordered anything but the meatloaf. And Arlen Voss, who would tell you those three are the best men he knows and would not be exaggerating. When Arlen's mother went into the home, Gil drove the box truck. When Deke's marriage came apart, the four of them sat in that booth until the girl started stacking chairs on the tables.

That room is worth something. Keep that in your hand while you read this, because the whole thing turns on it.

There was a fifth man once. Petey Rausch, who sat on the end. About eleven years ago Petey mentioned, in passing, buttering a roll, that he had started going back to church.

Nobody was cruel. That is not the kind of table it is. It is just that everything at that table gets a name, and the name stuck, and for three years Petey was Deacon. Deacon, what does the good book say about the Steelers. Deacon, you praying over that gravy.

Petey laughed every time. Petey stopped coming after about three years, and if you asked any of the other three why, they would tell you honestly that they have no idea.

Arlen prays. Every day, since the heart thing six years back, sitting on the edge of the bed with his socks in his hand.

And in six years, at that table, he has never once said so.

There is always a moment. Somebody's scan, somebody's kid, somebody's layoff. A half second opens where a man could say four ordinary words, and Arlen feels the whole eleven years lean on that half second, and it closes, and Deke starts in about the truck auction.

Then in February, Arlen started leaving the house ten minutes earlier.

He would pull into the diner lot at six fifty and shut the engine off and sit there. He was not rehearsing a speech. He had no speech. He would just say, most nights out loud, "Lord, I am Yours in there the same as I am out here," and then sit with his hands on the wheel until his watch said seven.

Ten minutes. He did that eleven weeks running and told nobody, and nothing whatsoever happened.

Then one Thursday in April, Marty said his sister's scan had come back and they were waiting on the second one.

And Arlen heard his own voice say, with no build-up at all, in the same tone he would have used about the weather, "I'll pray for her."

The table went on. Deke said something about the auction in Cedar Bluff. Nobody said Deacon. Nobody said anything. It went by like a truck on a road.

At ten o'clock Gil walked out with him, the way he always does, and stopped by the tailgate with his keys in his hand and said, "You meant that. About praying."

Arlen said, "Yeah. I did."

Gil looked at the parking lot for a second and said, "Do one for me too, then."

And he got in his car and went home.

He settled it before he got there

Daniel is a teenager a long way from home, in a palace, with the king's own food coming down the table toward him and no ally in the building.

Read what he does first.

But Daniel purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself with the portion of the king's meat, nor with the wine which he drank: therefore he requested of the prince of the eunuchs that he might not defile himself.Daniel 1:8

Purposed in his heart. Before the plate arrived. Before anybody asked him anything.

That is not a small detail, it is the whole mechanism. The decision was made in a room where nothing was pulling on him yet, which is the only kind of room where a decision like that ever actually gets made. By the time the food is in front of you, you are not deciding. You are finding out what you already decided.

You are not being asked to win a room. You are being asked to settle something before you walk into it, and that settling is open to you right now, tonight, in a parked truck at six fifty. That is not my technique for handling Thursdays. The written word says he purposed in his heart, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes an old sentence about a boy in Babylon land on a man of fifty-eight with his hands on a steering wheel.

Now look at what Daniel does second, because most people skip it and it costs them.

Therefore he requested.

He asked. Quietly, of one man, for one small thing. He did not announce anything to the hall. He did not tell the other young men what he thought of the king's table. He did not make a speech about the wine. The book of Daniel has some tremendous scenes in it further on, and this is not one of them, and that is on purpose.

Conscience is not the same thing as confrontation. A man can hold the whole weight of what he believes and never raise his voice in a diner.

You have not failed at anything by being quiet on Thursdays. Nothing in Scripture hands a man a verdict for holding his peace in a hard room, and the Spirit of God has never once been embarrassed of a man He was standing next to. If somebody has told you that silence is the same as denial, they were not reading Daniel 1.

And the cost is real. I am not going to stand here and tell you the room does not matter, because the room does matter, and a man who has been in a booth with the same three men for eleven years knows exactly what a nickname can do to a Thursday. Anyone who waves that off has not lost anything to it.

So here is what this message is not doing. It is not telling you to make an announcement. It is not telling you to correct anybody, or to stop going, or to go quiet on purpose to make a point, or to say one word about Petey Rausch to any man at that table. I do not know your Thursday and I will not spend your friendships from over here.

Your conscience belongs to God, and He has not handed the pen to anybody in that booth. The written word puts a man's purpose in his own heart, where the king could not reach it and the palace could not vote on it, and it is the Holy Spirit who holds a thing steady once it is set there.

What changes is not the table. What changes is which room the decision gets made in.

Right now, as you read this, the settling is being done in you and not demanded of you. The word of God shows a young man purposing first and asking second, and the Holy Spirit is the One doing the seating of it, tonight, quietly, before anybody at that diner knows a thing.