It Was The Exact Thing I Put Off

Dale had it on a list.

Not a mental list. An actual list, on the notes app, from the spring, with the thing written down in his own words, because he had been told about it in March by somebody at a shop and had said, "Right, yeah, I'll get that sorted."

He did not get it sorted.

There were reasons. His hours changed in April. His wife's father came out of a hospital in May and they had him for six weeks. There was a stretch in the summer where every single week had something in it, and the list stayed on the phone, and the thing stayed on the list.

The car stopped in August in a supermarket parking lot with the trunk full.

And when he called the shop, they came out, and the man looked at it for a while and told him what it was.

And it was the thing on the list.

Dale said, "Right." He said it about four times. And then he stood there in the parking lot next to a full trunk and did the arithmetic on five months.

Now, here is what has actually gone on since, and it is not about the bill, although the bill was real and it hurt.

Dale has been unusually quiet.

He has stopped mentioning the list. He has taken it off his phone. He does not talk about the August thing at all, and when his wife brought it up in September he said, "Yeah, that was my own stupid fault," in a voice that closed the subject.

And what has settled in him is not really about a car. It is a sentence, and the sentence is: this is what I'm like.

Because it is not the first thing he has put off. He knows that. And once a man has decided that a breakdown proves a pattern, every other thing he has ever left is suddenly evidence in the same case, and the case is against him, and he is the only one prosecuting it.

His wife said, "You've gone quiet on me."

And Dale said, "I'm all right."

What it was, and what it has been made to prove

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you it did not matter. It was on a list, and it went, and you know the order those two things happened in.

And I am not going to say a word about what the car needs now. That belongs to the people at the shop and they have it in hand.

One plain thing first. A man who has gone quiet on his wife and taken a list off his phone and is prosecuting a case against himself in the evenings is somewhere that can get darker than a bad August. If there are thoughts in it about not being here, tell a person today: your wife, a friend, a doctor, or the 988 crisis line for anyone in the United States. That is not a detour from this message. It is the most important line in it.

What I want to look at is the ledger, because there is one, and you did not get it from God.

If thou, LORD, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand?Psalm 130:3

Sit in that question a minute, because it is not rhetorical decoration. It is a real question with a real answer, and the answer is nobody.

You have a God who removes rather than reduces, and Scripture measures the distance He puts between a person and what was against them. Psalm 103 says as far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us, which is a distance with no arithmetic in it at all, and the Spirit of God is what makes that hold over five months and a list.

Not one person. Not the man who wrote it. Not the best person on your street. Nobody stands, if the marking is the system.

And the very next line is the reason he asked:

But there is forgiveness with thee, that thou mayest be feared.

So the psalm sets up a ledger, establishes that a ledger would finish every human being alive, and then says God does not run one.

Now look at what has been happening on a phone in a kitchen since August.

A ledger. With entries going back years. With a breakdown at the top of it in August and everything else a man ever left arranged underneath as supporting evidence.

You are not under a ledger, and Scripture asks who could stand if there were one and answers that nobody could. It is written in Psalm 130 that if the Lord should mark iniquities no man would stand, which is the passage stating plainly that the marking is not the system He runs, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about five months and a list.

You have been prosecuting a case that God closed before it was opened. Psalm 130 goes straight from the question to but there is forgiveness with thee, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that word but the hinge of the whole psalm.

Five months is not one decision

Here is the thing I most want to hand you, and it is about arithmetic.

In the parking lot you did the sum as five months. One long stretch of a man not doing a thing he had been told to do.

That is not what happened. What happened was about twenty separate weeks, and in each one of them there was a particular Tuesday or a particular Saturday where the thing was not the most urgent item in front of you.

April, your hours changed. May and June, a man came out of a hospital and lived in your house. The summer had something in every week of it.

None of those weeks was a decision to let a car break down. Every one of them was a decision that something in front of you mattered more that week, and in almost every case that judgment was right.

And here is what makes the sum feel so damning. It is being run backwards, from the parking lot, with the answer already known. Standing in August, five months looks like a straight line to a full trunk and a phone call. Standing in May, with a father in law in the spare room, it looked like a week.

Nobody schedules from the end. Nobody ever has.

You were making one week's decision at a time, and no verse anywhere audits a man by an outcome he could not see from where he was standing. Psalm 130 has the psalmist crying out of the depths before he says one word about being marked, and the Spirit of God is what makes crying out of a depth an honest place to speak from rather than a shameful one.

And there is a second thing in the arithmetic, and it is the one that will hold if you let it.

You did put it on the list. In your own words. In March.

A man who does not care does not write it down. A man who does not care does not say right, yeah, I'll get that sorted, and mean it at the time, and carry it on a phone through a summer he could not control.

The list is not the evidence against you. The list is the evidence that you were trying.

You have a record of intending to do it, and Scripture puts forgiveness in the same breath as the impossibility of standing. It is written in Psalm 130 that there is forgiveness with thee, which is offered as the reason God is feared rather than as a concession, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a settled thing rather than a hope.