The Bill And Her Birthday In One Week

The two things are four days apart and Marcus has been treating that as a message.

Tuesday: the shop calls with a figure that is not manageable this month and probably not next.

Saturday: Ava is seven.

Nothing connects those two events. They are not related. One is a machine and one is a date on a calendar that was set seven years ago in a delivery room, and the fact that they landed in the same week is arithmetic and nothing else.

And Marcus knows that. He would say it out loud to anybody who asked, and he would mean it.

He is not living as though he knows it.

What he has been doing since Tuesday is reading the week. Looking at it the way a man looks at a report he has been handed. And the report says something like: this is where you are at thirty four. This is what you have got. This is what you can and cannot do for a child on her birthday, four days after a phone call you could not answer properly.

That is not a thought he has had once. It is the atmosphere he has been in for five days.

And here is the specific way it shows.

He has been short. Not with Ava, never with Ava. With everything else. He was short with a colleague on Wednesday about something that did not matter. He was short in a store on Thursday. He has been going to bed at one and getting up at six and doing neither of those things well.

And the worst of it, and the reason this needs saying out loud, is that on Friday he found himself slightly relieved that Ava is only seven and does not know what a good birthday costs.

He sat with that thought for a while. He did not like what it made him.

Her mother texted about Saturday, about times and who is bringing what.

And Marcus wrote back: All good. See you at 2.

Two unrelated things in one week is a calendar

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

I am not going to tell you the money will show up before Saturday. Nobody can say that and a man told it and then handed a Saturday anyway is worse off. I am not going to suggest that praying in a particular way produces an amount, because that is a lie about God and it lands hardest on the people with the least. And I am not going to tell you what to do about the car itself, because what needs doing and in what order is a matter for somebody qualified with it in front of them.

And one plain thing first, because it matters more than the rest. Money trouble takes some men somewhere much darker than a bad week. If it has gone there, if there are thoughts in it about not being here, tell somebody today: a friend, a brother, 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 reading of the week.

You have a Father who knew about both of those before the week started, and Scripture says so without hedging it. Matthew 6 has Him knowing what is needed before anybody asks, which is a knowing that arrives ahead of a calendar rather than in answer to one, and the Spirit of God is what makes that true of a bill and a birthday landing in the same seven days.

Here is the verse, and I want to slow down on how the sentence is built.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.Romans 8:1

Three words in there are doing enormous work and people run past all of them.

There is. Present tense, stated as fact. Not: there will be. Not: there can be, if things go well.

Now. Which is a word about timing, and it means this week, the one with the phone call in it and the birthday four days later.

No condemnation. Not less. Not manageable. None.

And the condition attached is not performance and it is not provision. It is location. To them which are in Christ Jesus. That is where a man is, not how his month went.

You are not under a verdict this week, and Scripture states that as a present fact rather than as an outcome anybody arrives at. It is written that there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, which puts the whole thing in the present tense and attaches it to where a man is rather than what he has, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a Tuesday phone call and a Saturday afternoon.

You have been reading a report that was never issued, and the passage cancels it before any of the circumstances are discussed. Romans 8 opens on no condemnation and only afterward goes anywhere near a person's struggle, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that order the actual order rather than the hoped for one.

What Ava is actually going to remember

Here is the part I most want to hand you, as somebody who has sat with a great many people at the end of things.

Nobody remembers the presents.

I do not mean that as a comfort or a saying on a card. I mean it as a straightforward observation from a great many hospital chairs, where people talk about their fathers.

They talk about being taken somewhere. They talk about a man who was in a good mood on a particular day. They talk about being listened to at a kitchen table, and about a father who laughed at something they said, and about a specific afternoon that had nothing in it.

The thing a seven year old is going to take out of Saturday is not the size of anything. It is whether her father was there, in the actual room, in his face, or whether he was somewhere else doing arithmetic behind his eyes.

And that is the one thing in this whole week that is entirely within a man's control, and it costs nothing, and it is being quietly eaten by a report that was never issued.

You have the one thing that matters on Saturday already, and no verse anywhere makes a father's presence conditional on a month. Romans 8 puts a man in Christ regardless of his circumstances, and the Spirit of God is what makes being present in a room on Saturday a thing that does not require a single dollar.

And I want to say something about Friday, and the thought about her being only seven.

That thought was not evidence of a bad heart. That was a tired man's mind reaching for the only relief available at eleven at night, which was that this year the gap might not be visible.

A man who did not care would not have sat with it afterward and disliked it. The sitting with it is the part that tells you who he is.

You were never the thought you had on Friday, and Scripture puts the identity of a man in Christ rather than in what crosses his mind at eleven at night. It is written that there is now no condemnation to those in Christ Jesus, which covers the thought and the tiredness and the whole of the week, and His Spirit is what makes that cover real rather than theoretical.