The Gap Between Two Bad Ones

Bernice caught herself saying it in her own head on the fourteenth of the month, and it stopped her, because she had never heard herself say it before even though she has clearly been saying it for years.

Every bill was paid. Every single one, on time, without moving anything around. Her car had gone through its test in March with nothing on it. Her middle boy had come off her insurance in April. And there was money in her account on the fourteenth, which in her life has almost never been a sentence that was true.

And she thought, quite clearly, in the flat voice you use for something obvious: this is the gap.

Meaning the gap between the last bad stretch and the next one. Meaning she was in an interval, and the job of an interval is to be used carefully, and enjoying an interval is how people get caught out.

She has never once said that to a human being. She has said, out loud, in church, in the kitchen, on the phone to her sister, that God is faithful, and she meant it every time.

She has also never in twenty-six years spent a good month believing it was a month rather than a gap.

What got her was her granddaughter, who is seven, and who came in while Bernice was doing the ironing and put a piece of paper on the board and said: Grandma, that's you. And it was Bernice, drawn with about eleven fingers, and above her head the child had written the word HAPPY in enormous letters, and Bernice said, without thinking about it: is that me?

And the child said, with the absolute impatience of a seven year old: yes, because you are.

Because you are.

Bernice stood over an ironing board with a drawing on it and had to put the iron down and hold on to the edge, and she could not have explained it to one person in that family.

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

She thought: I have been calling my life a gap for twenty-six years, and a seven year old just called me happy in the present tense.

Say the word right, before anything else

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 at an ironing board.

Wealth here means a portion. Not a balance, not an interval, not a good month. 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 this article is written for one particular woman, so let me say exactly who. It is for the one who has enough this month and is standing in it sideways. If you are actually short, if the fourteenth is a problem and the fear is telling you the plain truth, then nothing on this page is asking you to be content with that, and an article that did would deserve to be torn up. Real lack is real and it deserves a real answer, and impossibleharvest.com in this same family is built for exactly that. What I want to look at is the word gap, and I would rather the word of God did the looking, with the Holy Spirit doing the work, than that I guessed.

The jar that was never full

There is a story in Kings about a widow in a drought, and I want to be careful with it, because it is often used to promise people something nobody has the authority to promise.

For thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the LORD sends rain upon the earth. She went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty.1 Kings 17:14-16

Here is what I am not saying. I am not telling you that your account will behave like that jar. Nobody who tells you that has been authorized to, and this site will never do it, in any form, however softened.

Here is what the text actually shows, and it is better. That jar was never full. Not once. There was never a morning she walked in and found it heaped up so she could stop thinking about it. Every single morning of many days she went to a jar with a small amount in it and took out that day's, and every single morning there was that day's, and that is all there ever was.

She did not get security. She got supply, which is a completely different thing and requires a Person on the other end of it.

You are not a faithless woman for the word gap. You are somebody who has had two long stretches go badly and whose mind has done the entirely reasonable arithmetic. The written word does not scold anybody for that, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes the difference between agreeing that God is faithful and being able to call a Tuesday a Tuesday.

And here is what is true of you today, on the fourteenth: you have today, and the word says the day's flour was there every day for many days, and His Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it into a woman standing at an ironing board.

What the word gap is actually doing

Think about what got you over that board. It wasn't the drawing. You have a drawer of drawings.

It was: yes, because you are. It was a seven year old using the present tense about you with total confidence and no idea she was doing anything. You were starving to be described in the present tense, and you still are, and the written word treats that hunger as reasonable rather than as weakness, and it is the Holy Spirit who says so to a person and not merely about them.

That is the honest thing under the word gap. Calling a good month a gap is not pessimism. It is a way of not being caught out, and it works, in the sense that a woman who never unpacks is never surprised by having to move. What it costs is every good month she ever gets.

Here is what the word has already settled about you, so that His Spirit can settle it in you tonight. You were never given the job of guarding yourself against the next bad stretch. Jesus taught people to ask for today's bread and left tomorrow entirely out of the request, and He was in that room while the iron was still on.