The Collection on Saturday

Your cousin sent the message to all of you at once, which was the kind thing to do, and it is also why there is nowhere to stand.

The flowers, the notice in the paper, the room after. She has costed it and split it and she has been careful and fair about it, and she put at the end that anybody who cannot do it should just say.

Just say.

You have read that line about nine times.

Saturday is Saturday. He was your uncle and he taught you to drive and he came to the hospital that time and sat in the corridor for four hours without being asked. You are going to be there in the second row and you are going to carry the thing you carry.

And there is an envelope going round, and you do not have it, and there is no version of the next four days in which you do.

You could say. She meant it. She is not a person who would ever mention it again.

But the words I cannot put in for my uncle's funeral will not come out of your mouth, and you have tried them out three times in the car, and every time something in you closes.

God keeps a record and it is not the one going round

There is an image in Psalm 56 that is strange enough to be worth stopping on.

Thou tellest my wanderings: put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?Psalm 56:8

Tellest means counts. God counts the wanderings, which is an odd thing to count, and then David asks Him to keep the tears in a bottle, and then asks a question with the answer already in it: are they not in Thy book.

There is a record being kept, and it is not a record of contributions.

Nowhere in that verse is anybody totalling what was given. What is being kept is the crying and the walking about, which is to say the things that cost a person and that nobody can see.

You are already recorded in the account that matters. I am not putting my own opinion over you here. Scripture says put Thou my tears into Thy bottle, are they not in Thy book, Psalm 56:8, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a car outside a house with a phone face down on the seat.

What the envelope actually measures

Let us be exact about this, because grief plus money is where people are cruellest to themselves.

That collection measures one thing. It measures what is in a bank account in a given week in the lives of about eleven people.

It does not measure love. It does not measure who sat where in the hospital corridor. It does not measure the twenty years since he taught you to drive.

And it has never measured any of those, at any funeral, ever.

You are not being weighed on Saturday. Scripture says man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart, 1 Samuel 16:7, and the Holy Spirit does not read a person's grief off an envelope.

The words that will not come out

Now the hard part, and I am not going to be brisk about it.

I cannot put in for my uncle's funeral. You have tried it three times in the car and it will not come.

I understand exactly why, and Scripture does not scold you for it, Psalm 56:8, and the Holy Spirit is not standing over a person rehearsing in a car. It is not pride about money. It is that saying it out loud at a funeral feels like it puts your love for him on trial in front of the family, and you would rather carry it than risk that.

So here is a smaller true thing. You do not have to say that sentence.

You could send four words to your cousin. I am short this month. That is a fact about a month, and it is not a statement about your uncle, and it is not a confession.

You have not been asked to carry this alone in order to prove anything. Scripture says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ, Galatians 6:2, and the Holy Spirit is the one who usually gets four plain words out of somebody who has been rehearsing a speech.

And nothing here costs anything

Let me say this plainly, because it is a funeral and this is exactly where people get sold things.

Nobody on this page is going to tell you that a gift releases anything. There is no toll booth in front of your breakthrough and there never will be. Scripture never put a price on receiving from God, Isaiah 55:1, and the Holy Spirit does not work a turnstile, least of all in a week like this one.

And there is no advice here about the money. You know your own four days better than anybody.