He Promised It At The Table And Could Not Do It

He said it at the end of a meal, with everybody there, and he meant it entirely.

It was not a boast. He is not a man who boasts and everybody at that table would tell you so. It was a thing that needed doing, and he could see that nobody was going to do it, and he said, quite simply, leave it with me.

That was a good moment. He remembers his mother's face.

And he could not do it.

There were reasons. Some of them were genuinely outside him, and one of them was a thing he had misjudged, and he does not hide from that. But the practical result was that he did not do the thing he said he would do at a table in front of eleven people.

Somebody else eventually sorted it out. Partly. In a smaller way than he had intended and with more trouble than there would have been.

Nobody has ever raised it.

That is what he did not expect, and it is what he has found hardest, because there is no conversation to have and therefore no way for it to end. His mother has never mentioned it. His brother has never mentioned it. The person it most affected has never mentioned it, and has been exactly as warm with him as before, which he does not know how to hold.

Two years, and every gathering has a small area in it that everybody walks around, and he is the only one who thinks so, possibly.

And what he does now is smaller than what he did before. He does not say leave it with me. He says he will try, or he will see, or he asks whether anybody else could. He is helpful in ways with no promise inside them.

And the sentence he has never said out loud: I am not a man whose word means anything.

And you have a table like that. You said something in front of the people whose opinion you actually care about, and you could not do it, and you have been quietly shrinking your promises ever since.

He upholds all who are falling

There is a line in Psalm one hundred and forty-five that is worth sitting with because of its tense.

The Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down.Psalm 145:14

All who are falling. Present continuous. Mid fall.

Not those who have fallen and got up, and not those who are about to fall and would like to be prevented. The upholding described there is happening during, and the psalm treats that as one of the ordinary characteristics of God, listed in among His greatness and His kingdom and His care for everything He has made.

You are inside that line right now, in the middle of the falling, and the upholding is not waiting for the end of it. It is written that the Lord upholds all who are falling and raises up all who are bowed down (Psalm 145:14), and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an ordinary line from a psalm of praise and lays it under a man who has been walking around one small area of a courtyard for two years.

Now the silence, because it is doing more damage than the failure.

Nobody has raised it. You have read that as the loudest possible statement, and the thing about a silence is that it will take any meaning a person puts into it and never argue back.

There is another reading and it costs nothing to consider. In many families the way love is expressed is by not mentioning something. Your mother saying nothing may not be a verdict withheld. It may be the most protective thing she knows how to do.

You have been living under a judgment nobody has issued, and the silence you fear may be the kindest thing in that courtyard. Scripture says love covers a multitude of sins (1 Peter 4:8), and this was not even a sin, and it is the Holy Spirit who put that covering love into a family that has been quietly practicing it around you for two years.

And the person it most affected, who has been exactly as warm as before.

You do not know how to hold that, and the reason you do not know how to hold it is that it does not fit the story. In the story you are carrying, warmth from that person should be impossible. It is not impossible, it is happening, weekly, and you have been discounting the evidence for two years because it contradicts a verdict you have already accepted.

You are being treated exactly as before by the person with the most standing to treat you otherwise. It is written that mercy triumphs over judgment (James 2:13), and it is His Spirit who has been producing that triumph in a real person at your own table without anybody making a speech about it.

And the shrinking, which is the actual cost going forward.

You do not say leave it with me any more. Notice what that removes from a family. Somebody at every table has to be the one who says that, and you were that person for years, and the seat is currently empty and nobody has taken it.

You are still able to say that sentence, and no promise you failed to keep has revoked your right to make another one. Scripture says the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable (Romans 11:29), and it is the Holy Spirit who has kept the instinct alive in you, which is why the smaller version you offer now costs you something every single time.