He Sends Money Every Month

Corinne's boy has not missed a first of the month in nine years, and she would like that written down somewhere before anything else in this is said.

He went when he was twenty-four because there was nothing where they are, and everybody knew it and nobody said it out loud, and he has sent money home on the first of every month since, without one reminder and without one word about it.

It is not a small amount and it is not a token. It paid for the roof. It paid for her sister's care for two years and nobody outside the family knows that. It is why Corinne, who worked in a school kitchen for thirty-one years, is not in the situation that three women she knows are in.

She is proud of him in a way she cannot say to his face because he would be embarrassed.

And she eats at that table on her own, and on the first of the month there is a message that says the same six words it has said for nine years, and she answers it with the same four words, and that is the conversation.

He came at Christmas the year before last. He was there nine days. She got the good sheets out.

What got her was a Tuesday in the spring. A woman from two doors down, who is not really a friend, more somebody who has always been there, put her head round the door because the bin was out and Corinne's bin is never out on a Tuesday, and found her in the kitchen and said: I will put the kettle on. You sit there. I am not asking you anything.

I am not asking you anything.

Corinne sat at her own table with her hands in her lap and could not say anything for a bit, and she could not have explained it to anybody in that family, and least of all to her son.

And the sentence that came to her, sitting there, had nothing to do with the money.

She thought: everything that can be fixed by money has been fixed by money for nine years, and there is a chair at this table, and no amount arriving on any first of any month was ever going to sit down in it.

Say the word plain

Before we go on I want to say plain what this site means by wealth, because it is a slippery word and I would rather be understood than admired.

Wealth here means a portion. Not a balance, not what arrives on the first, not a roof that got paid for. A portion is the old table word for what gets set down in front of a body because they belong at that table, and Scripture takes that plain word and does a startling thing with it: God says of certain people that He Himself is their portion. That is the only meaning the word carries here.

And I want to say something plain about that boy before we go one line further. Nothing on this page is a word against him. He went because there was nothing here. He has sent money home for nine years without being asked, which most people do not do for nine months, and what he sends is not a substitute for himself and he has never once pretended it was. He is doing what a good son with no other option does, and the money was a real answer to a real problem, and it worked, and I am glad of it and so is God.

What I want to do is much smaller. I want to name the chair, and I would rather the word of God named it, with the Holy Spirit doing the work, than that I guessed at it.

You were included before you noticed anything. Scripture holds it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets it settle.

The God who comes into the room

Paul opens his second letter to Corinth with a description of God that is unusual because of where it puts Him.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.2 Corinthians 1:3-4

The word he uses for comfort is not a soft word. It means, underneath, to be called alongside. It is not a feeling sent from a distance and it is not a message. It is somebody coming and standing next to you.

And notice that Paul does not say God comforts us out of our affliction. He says in all our affliction, which is a preposition doing an enormous amount of work: not by removing it and not by waiting until it lifts, but by coming into the room where it is.

That is a completely different kind of provision from an amount arriving on the first of the month, and it is not better than it and it is not instead of it. It is the other kind, and you have been receiving one and going without the other, and neither of those facts is anybody's fault.

You are not an ungrateful mother. You are somebody whose practical needs have been met faithfully for nine years by a good son a long way away, and who eats at a table with a chair at it, and the written word does not scold anybody for that. It describes a God who comes and stands alongside, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between agreeing with that and a kitchen feeling less empty on a Tuesday.

And here is what is true of you this evening, before anything about the distance changes. You are met where the money could not reach. His word calls Him the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort, present tense, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact in a room rather than a phrase in a letter.

What arrives and what does not

Think about what got you at that table. It wasn't the kettle. You are perfectly capable of making tea.

It was: I am not asking you anything. It was a woman from two doors down knowing, without being told, that the thing you needed was not a conversation and not help and not advice, but somebody in the chair. You were starving to be sat with, and you still are, and the written word treats that hunger as reasonable rather than as a complaint about your son, and it is the Holy Spirit who says so to a woman and not merely about her.

That is the honest thing under the first of the month. It is not that the money is not enough. The money is doing exactly what money can do and it is doing it faithfully. It is that nine years of provision arriving from four thousand miles away cannot fill a chair, and it was never designed to, which is no reflection on the boy who sends it.

Here is what the word has already settled about you, so that His Spirit can settle it in you tonight. Somebody is called alongside and it is not a message. Jesus told His friends that He would not leave them as orphans and that He was coming to them, which is language about a room and not about a delivery, and He was in that kitchen before the bin was noticed.