Wednesday at the Hospital

Everybody has been very good about the appointment and nobody has asked about the getting there.

Wednesday, ten past nine. That is a seven o'clock start from your end. Two buses, or one bus and a train, or a lift from somebody who would have to take a half day, and then the car park, which charges by the hour and has a barrier that does not care what the appointment was about.

You worked it out on Sunday night on the back of a receipt.

It is not a large figure. That is what makes it so difficult to say out loud. If it were a large figure it would be a crisis and people would understand a crisis. It is the kind of number that people who have it do not think about at all, and that is precisely why saying it makes your face hot.

You have not told the person you are going with. You have said you are fine for getting there and you will sort it out, and you have said it in the voice that closes a subject.

So it sits with you. The appointment is not the thing keeping you awake. The road to the appointment is.

And underneath that, quieter, is a thought that arrived some time in the last few years and has never been examined: that a need this small is beneath God's attention, and that praying about a bus fare is somehow an insult to Him.

Jesus picked the smallest things on purpose

There is a passage where Jesus reaches for two examples, and both of them are deliberately trivial.

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father. But the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear ye not therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows.Matthew 10:29-31

A farthing was the smallest coin in circulation. Two sparrows for the smallest coin there was, and Jesus says the Father is present at the fall of one of them.

Then He goes smaller. The hairs of your head. Not counted once, at some point. Numbered, which means known individually, which is an absurd level of attention and He says it without smiling.

He is making an argument, and the argument runs upward. If the smallest things are attended to, then the ones you have decided are too small to mention have already been mentioned.

You are not bothering God with the size of this. I am not putting my own opinion over you. Scripture says the very hairs of your head are all numbered, Matthew 10:30, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and sets it down at a bus stop with a receipt in your pocket.

The shame attached to a small number

Here is what needs saying plainly, because it is doing more work than the figure.

A person will pray about a diagnosis without hesitating and will feel ridiculous praying about a car park. The size of the need has become, without anybody deciding it, a test of whether the need is allowed.

That instinct is not reverence. It is embarrassment dressed as reverence, and it keeps a person vague in front of God at precisely the moment they need to be exact.

Jesus taught people to ask for bread. Today's bread. The smallest, most ordinary domestic supply there is, placed in the middle of the prayer He gave everybody, between the kingdom and forgiveness, without an apology attached anywhere.

You are welcome in this conversation with the exact figure and the exact date. Scripture says in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God, Philippians 4:6, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a person past the hot face far enough to say a small number out loud.

Nothing on this page costs anything

I want to be clear, because this is where people get sold things.

Nobody here is going to tell you that a gift releases a supply, or that there is a sum you can send that moves a barrier in a car park. Nothing on this page has a toll booth in front of it and nothing ever will. Scripture never once put a price on receiving from God, Isaiah 55:1, and the Holy Spirit does not work a turnstile.

And there is no advice here. Not about transport, not about who to ring, not about what you might have arranged differently. You have already worked it out on the back of a receipt, twice, and a stranger with a suggestion would be no help at all.

The person you are going with

One more thing, and it is the practical one. Scripture puts a burden between two people on purpose, Galatians 6:2, and the Holy Spirit has moved through an ordinary friend far more often than through a miracle at a barrier.

You told them you were fine for getting there.

You are allowed to tell them the truth instead. Not as an appeal, and not with the whole story attached. Just the fact: the fare and the car park are the part that is difficult this week. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Matthew 10:29-31, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

I know exactly why you did not. Being the one who cannot cover the small thing is worse than being the one who cannot cover the big thing, because the big thing is a misfortune and the small thing feels like a verdict.

It is not a verdict. It is a Wednesday with an early start and an unhelpful car park.

You have not been asked to carry this alone. Scripture says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ, Galatians 6:2, and the Holy Spirit has always tended to arrive in a household through somebody else's ordinary kindness rather than through a miracle at a barrier.