I Spend So I Do Not Feel Like A Failure

You were standing in a shop at half past eight and you already knew.

Not consciously, in words. But there was a moment before you picked the thing up where something in you registered that this had stopped being about the person it was for.

You bought it anyway. And it was fine, and it was a nice thing, and they will like it. And in the car you had about four seconds of a feeling you did not want, and you turned the radio up.

That is the thing I want to talk about, and I want to say at the start that I am not going to tell you to spend less. Nobody at this distance knows your household or your income, and a stranger who hands you a rule about your own money has overstepped.

What I want to look at is the four seconds in the car.

Because here is what I think is underneath it, and you may already have worked it out, which is why the four seconds are so unwelcome. The buying is not really generosity. Some of it is. But a part of it, and you know which part, is buying your way out of a feeling about yourself that arrives every year at this time and has been arriving since you were young.

The feeling is roughly: I have not done enough with what I was given. And the shop offers a way to be, for one afternoon, a person who is doing very well.

That which is not bread

There is a question in Isaiah that is far more piercing than the answer people usually give it.

Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread? and your labour for that which satisfieth not? (Isaiah 55:2, King James Version)

Notice it is a question rather than a rule. God does not say stop. He asks why, and the why is aimed at something quite precise.

That which is not bread. He is not condemning spending. He is naming a category: the thing bought to do a job it cannot possibly do. Bread feeds. This does not, and the not feeding is the point.

And the second half is the one that lands, because it names more than money. It names the hours of a life, exchanged for something that does not close the gap it was bought to close.

You are able to hear that as a question rather than a rebuke, and Isaiah 55:2 has never once been aimed at a person's foolishness. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a woman read her own habit without flinching from it, and the written word asks wherefore rather than issuing an order.

Sit with the fact that this is God asking. Not a budgeting article. Not a person in your family.

You are being asked a question by somebody who already knows the answer, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that difference the whole difference. It is written into Isaiah 55:2 that the asking is an invitation rather than an accusation, and Scripture puts the question in the middle of a chapter about being fed for nothing.

What the four seconds are

Let me name the mechanism, because naming it is most of what tonight is for.

There is a gap between your life as it stands and something pictured a long time ago. Everybody has one. Yours widens at this time of year because the year is ending and endings invite accounting.

Spending closes the gap for about ninety minutes. Genuinely closes it. Somebody walks out of a shop with something good, and for a while that person provides handsomely, and the gap is not visible from there.

Then the receipt goes in a drawer, and the gap reopens, usually in the car, usually within about four seconds of the engine starting.

You were never buying an object in that shop at half past eight, and Isaiah 55:2 names the category exactly: money spent for that which is not bread. The Spirit of God is the one who is present for the four seconds in the car rather than only for the good parts, and Scripture asks the question without a word of contempt in it.

And here is why this matters more than the money. As long as it goes unnamed, it repeats. Not because you are weak, but because an unnamed pattern has nothing to catch on. It runs the same way next October and you will be in the same shop with the same four seconds, and by then it will feel like simply who you are.

You have a pattern with a name available to it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman the first time she says what she has actually been buying. The written word has never once required a person to break a habit before it will speak plainly to them, and Isaiah 55:2 puts the naming before any change at all.

One line, and no plan

So here is the assignment, and I want to be exact about how small it is.

Write one line naming what the buying is actually for.

Not a budget. Not a rule for the coming weeks. Not a decision about anything already bought or about to be.

Something like: I buy so that for one afternoon I am somebody who is doing well. Or: I spend because I cannot bear the look on her face if there is less. Or: I am buying my way out of a feeling about the year.

You are able to write a true line about what is actually there, and Isaiah 55:2 asks a question and then offers food rather than a correction. The Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman at a table writing an honest sentence, and the written word puts the question and the invitation in the same breath.

I want to be plain about why the line and not a plan. A plan made tonight, on the back of an uncomfortable feeling, is made by the same feeling that does the buying. It will be strict, you will break it, and breaking it will hand you fresh evidence for the very accusation the buying was answering. That is a loop and it goes downward.

A written line does something different. It puts the true thing outside your head, where it can be looked at on an ordinary Tuesday by a person who is not standing in a shop.

You are taking the thing out of the shop and onto paper, and it has never once obliged you to reform anything in the same evening. The Holy Spirit is the one who does the actual work in a person over time, and Isaiah 55:2 asks wherefore and then says come, and eat that which is good.