The Package Tracking Number That Hasn't Moved in Nine Days

The Package Tracking Number That Hasn't Moved in Nine Days

I ordered a part for the washing machine online, nothing dramatic, a forty dollar valve that was supposed to arrive in four business days. On day five I checked the tracking number and it said "in transit," which sounded fine until I checked it again on day seven and it still said "in transit," the same words, no new scan, no new city, like the package had been swallowed somewhere between the warehouse and my front porch. By day nine I had refreshed that page probably thirty times, not because refreshing it ever changed anything, but because the not knowing had started to feel worse than whatever the actual answer turned out to be. My wife finally asked me why I kept pulling my phone out at dinner, and I realized I could not explain it to her without admitting how much smaller doubts like this one can still get under my skin.

I have been sober ten years, long enough that I used to assume my faith had firmed up right alongside my sobriety, two things healing on the same calendar. What a stalled tracking number taught me this week is that the part of me that panics when the evidence stops updating never actually went away. It just stopped being about liquor stores and started being about delivery windows, and underneath both sits the same old fear, that silence means something has gone permanently wrong instead of simply taking longer than I wanted. I have a prayer I have been praying for over a year now that looks exactly like that tracking page, no new movement, no new scan, nothing I can point to and say here, this is where it's working. Some nights I wonder if I have been talking into a line nobody is on.

Scripture does not scold people for wondering that out loud, which surprised me the first time I actually looked for it. The disciples saw the risen Jesus standing in front of them and their first reaction was not worship. It was fear dressed up as disbelief. "And He said to them, 'Why are you troubled? And why do doubts arise in your hearts? Behold My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself. Handle Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I have'" (Luke 24:38-39, NKJV). He did not wait outside the room until their doubt cleared up. He walked straight into the middle of it and offered His own hands as the answer, proof held out to people who were still visibly unsure what they were looking at.

Thomas gets remembered for his doubt more than almost anyone in the Gospels, and I used to read his story as a warning. Lately I read it as something closer to an invitation. "Then He said to Thomas, 'Reach your finger here, and look at My hands; and reach your hand here, and put it into My side. Do not be unbelieving, but believing.' And Thomas answered and said to Him, 'My Lord and my God!'" (John 20:27-28, NKJV). Jesus did not make Thomas feel foolish for needing something more than a secondhand report. He simply gave him what he needed, and Thomas moved from doubt to the clearest confession of faith in the whole book in the space of one sentence. That tells me doubt was never the finish line for Thomas. It was just the place Jesus met him.

Here is where my own reasoning runs out of road every time. I can build a logical case for why the prayer is probably still working behind the scenes, the same way I can explain why a package might sit unscanned for days without actually being lost. The explanation might even be true. It has never once been the thing that settles my chest. Faith was never going to arrive by out-arguing the silence, because faith by its own definition deals in what I cannot yet see. "Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1, NKJV). Paul describes the same posture as a way of walking through a day, not a feeling I either have or don't. "For we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7, NKJV).

This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own refreshing of the page never could, not a faster update but a steadiness underneath the waiting itself. Paul tells the Romans where that steadiness actually comes from, and it is not a conclusion I talked myself into. "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God" (Romans 8:16, NKJV). Witness, present tense, happening in me whether or not the tracking page ever changes. Jesus promised His disciples the night before He left them that this exact kind of peace would not depend on circumstances lining up first. "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you; not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid" (John 14:26-27, NKJV). Not as the world gives. The world's peace needs the package to arrive first. His does not.

The valve showed up on day eleven, two days late and perfectly fine, and I felt almost embarrassed at how many times I had refreshed that page for nothing. The year-old prayer has not moved yet, not that I can see. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which page you keep refreshing, looking for proof that something is still coming. He has a plan for you that was never actually stalled just because you couldn't see it updating, and He will never leave you to sit with the silence alone.

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Scriptures used (NKJV): Luke 24:38-39; John 20:27-28; Hebrews 11:1; 2 Corinthians 5:7; Romans 8:16; John 14:26-27.