The Long Way Back From The Post Box

He goes out at about ten to post a letter, and the post box is at the end of the road by the bus shelter, and it takes four minutes.

He comes back the long way, round by the allotments, which takes nineteen.

He does not decide to. He gets to the corner where he would turn for home and he keeps going straight on, and he could not tell you why, except that he is not ready to be in the house yet with the telly off and somebody asking him if he is all right.

Because on the walk back, his head has started.

He gave something that afternoon. He is not going to tell you what it was and neither am I, and it does not matter, because the size of it is not the subject. He gave it gladly. He meant it at the time and he still means it now and he would do it again tomorrow, and none of that is in question.

What is happening on the walk back is a list.

The thing in October. Whether the car goes another winter. The place they said they would take her and have now not taken her for two years running. Item by item, in order, and every item ends with the same small silent sum, and the sum comes out the same way every time.

And then, somewhere past the allotment gates, the second thing starts, and the second thing is worse.

He wants something back.

Not the thing itself. He is not that man and the idea would appal him. What he wants is smaller and much harder to say out loud. He wants it to have registered. He wants a phone call that sounded slightly different. He wants somebody, once, to know what it actually cost, and he cannot say that to a living soul because it would sound exactly like the thing he hates.

So he walks past the allotments at ten at night and he is ashamed of himself, and he is not sure whether he is ashamed of the wanting or of the counting, and it is both.

Now let me put something plain on the table before we go any further, because the name over this door is a promise that needs correcting the moment you walk through it.

The wealth this is about is not a balance. It is a portion. It is what is actually in your hands today and enough for today, and that is the only kind of wealth I have got to offer you here, and it happens to be the kind that was actually promised.

And I am telling you now, plainly, so you never have to wonder where this is going. Nothing in this message says that what you gave is going to come back to you. Not multiplied, not returned, not repaid in some other currency. That is not the deal, it was never the deal, and if it were the deal then what you did that afternoon would have been a transaction and not a gift.

What I have got for you is better than that, and it is aimed at exactly the thing keeping you out on the road at ten at night.

He does not answer the anxiety with more. He answers it with a Father

The sentence I want you to have comes in the middle of the most famous thing Jesus ever said about worrying, and almost everybody quotes the wrong half of it.

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.Matthew 6:31-32

Look at what He does with the anxiety.

He does not tell the anxious man that a larger amount is coming. He does not answer the fear about need by promising increase. If He had, He would have left every person listening exactly where you were on that road tonight, doing sums in the dark, waiting to see whether the sums came out. I am not putting my own idea over you: that is what the written word says, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it land.

He answers it with a fact about the Father. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all.

Knows. Present tense, already, before you set out for the post box. He knows about October. He knows about the car. He knows about the place you have not taken her for two years, and He knew about it that afternoon while you were being generous, and there was nothing you did today that put Him in the position of having to catch up. That is not my opinion. It is what the word says, and His Spirit is the one who carries it.

And notice which word carries the weight, because it is not a word about supply. It is a word about relationship. Father. Anybody can run a supply. Only a father knows a list without being handed one.

That is the answer to the walk home. You are not being asked to work out whether the numbers stretch. You are being told who is holding the whole list, and that He was holding it before you gave anything away. The written word settles that, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it real in a body.

Now, the second thing, the one you cannot say out loud. The wanting something back.

I am not going to call that greed and you should not either. It is not greed. It is a very ordinary human wish to be known, which happens to have attached itself to this because this is the place where the cost was.

But hear where it leads if it is left there. A gift that is waiting for something to come back is not resting yet. It is still out on loan, in your chest, accruing, and every time the acknowledgment does not come the account gets a little heavier. That is not a moral failure in you. It is simply that a thing you have not fully let go of stays in your hands and goes on weighing what it weighs. None of that is mine. It is what Scripture says, and it is His Spirit who does the delivering.

You can put it down. Not by deciding you never wanted anything. By handing over the wanting itself, which is the only part of the whole business that is still yours to hand over.