In Deed and in Truth

Nell did it in a phone call that lasted about four minutes and she has never told anybody, including her own husband, which she is aware is a lot to carry.

Her sister was going to have to pull out. That is the whole of the situation. There was a course, and a fee, and a date, and her sister at forty-one finally doing the thing she should have done at twenty-two, and a shortfall that appeared in the last fortnight because of something that was nobody's fault.

Nell had the money. She had it because it was the deposit on something she and her husband had been quietly working toward for a long time, which is now a year and a half further away and which he does not know is a year and a half further away, and she will tell him, and she has not yet.

She sent it. Four minutes. Her sister cried and Nell said stop it and they both laughed.

She would do it again. She would do it again tomorrow, and she is not conflicted about the act at all.

What she is conflicted about is what happens in her chest at family things.

Because it comes up. Of course it comes up. Her sister is doing brilliantly and everybody is proud of her and there is a photograph, and Nell's mother says isn't it wonderful, and Nell says yes, and it is wonderful, and it is entirely true that she is glad.

And there is a small hard thing that arrives at the same moment, every time, without permission, and it makes her want to leave the room.

She thinks it means she gave it wrong.

What got her was her niece, who is eleven and had been listening to the adults for too long the way children do. In the kitchen afterward, drying something, she said to Nell: Auntie Nell, do you think Mum could have done the course if you hadn't been there?

And Nell said something vague, and the girl, who is eleven and therefore relentless, said: because she couldn't have. I know she couldn't have. I was there.

I was there.

Nell stood in her mother's kitchen with a tea towel in her hands and could not say anything for a moment, and she could not have explained it to a single adult on the other side of that wall.

And the sentence that arrived, standing there, had nothing to do with the deposit.

She thought: it actually happened. Whatever my chest does at Christmas, the thing actually happened, and an eleven year old is the only person who has ever said so out loud.

Let me say the word properly first

Before we go on I want to be plain about what wealth means on this site, because the word is slippery and I would rather be clear than clever with a woman standing in a kitchen with a tea towel.

Wealth here means a portion. Not a balance, not a deposit, not the thing that is now a year and a half further away. A portion is the old table word for what is set down in front of somebody because they belong at that table, and Scripture takes that ordinary word and does something outrageous with it: God says of certain people that He Himself is their portion. That is the only sense the word carries here.

And now the paragraph that matters most in this article, said as plainly as I can say it. There is no ask on this page. Nothing here suggests you give anything to anybody, there is no link and no cause anywhere in it, and this site will never once tell you that giving produces a return, in any form, however gently it is worded. That wire does not exist here and it never will. You made a four minute phone call. That is between you and your sister and God, and this article has one interest in it: the small hard thing that arrives in your chest at family gatherings.

That is the whole job. Not to grade what you did, and certainly not to tell you that it will come back to you. To stand in the kitchen with you, and I would rather the word of God stood there, with the Holy Spirit doing the work, than that I guessed at what that feeling is.

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

Deed and truth, which are not the same as feeling

John writes three verses about love that are famous for the middle one and worth reading for the last one.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.1 John 3:16-18

Read the last line very slowly, because it is the one that settles a woman with a tea towel in her hands.

Not in word or talk, but in deed and in truth.

He gives two categories, and he names the pair that counts, and feeling is in neither list. He does not say let us not love in word but in warm consistent emotion. He says in deed, which is a thing that either happened or did not, and in truth, which is a thing that either is or is not the case.

Both of those are settled about you. The deed happened in four minutes in a phone call and a woman is on a course. The truth is that she could not have gone otherwise, and an eleven year old just confirmed it in a kitchen.

You are not a woman who gave wrong. You are somebody who paid a real price and whose chest reacts at family gatherings the way a body reacts to a real price, and the written word does not scold anybody for that, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between agreeing that the deed counts and being able to stay in the room.

And here is what is true of you today, before you tell your husband and before anything about the eighteen months changes. You are provided for and your hands are open. His word says love is made real in deed and in truth, present tense, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a settled fact in a body rather than a verse a person nods at.

What the hard feeling actually is

Think about what got you at that sink. It wasn't the credit. You have gone to some trouble not to be credited.

It was: I was there, I know she couldn't have. It was the only person in that house who could state the fact stating it, out loud, without knowing what she was doing. You were starving to hear that it was real, and you still are, and the written word treats that hunger as reasonable rather than as wanting applause, and it is the Holy Spirit who says so to a person and not merely about them.

That is the honest thing under the hard feeling. It is not resentment of your sister. It is a body registering a genuine cost in a room where the cost is invisible, and a body does that whether or not the mind has settled the matter, and it will keep doing it at Christmas.

Here is what the word has already settled about you, so that His Spirit can settle it in you tonight. The deed stands. Jesus said one woman had done a beautiful thing while the room was still complaining about the expense, and He said it about a gift nobody else in that room valued, and He was in that kitchen while the tea towel was still in your hands.