It Costs The Same And I Have Less

The prices went up and the amount coming in did not.

That is the whole of it and it does not take a page to explain. You have run the numbers, you have run them twice, and what you have known since about the middle of September is that there is a shortfall and there is nothing behind it.

There is no overtime available to you. There is no second thing to take on. That door closed a while back and you have made your peace with it in most respects.

What you have not made your peace with is what you are quietly planning to do about the day.

Because there is a plan, and you have not told anybody. It goes something like: be a bit unwell. Or find that the road is bad. Or say the thing about not wanting to put anybody out, which has the advantage of being a sentence that nobody in your family will argue with.

You are planning to withdraw, and to have the withdrawal look like something else, so that nobody finds out that a man who has provided for fifty years cannot cover a day.

Let me say the plain thing to you the way I would want it said to me. That is the wrong problem being solved. Nobody in that house is short of a person. They are short of you.

When my strength faileth

There is a prayer in the psalms that an older man wrote and it does not dress anything up.

Cast me not off in the time of old age; forsake me not when my strength faileth. (Psalm 71:9, King James Version)

When my strength faileth. Not if. He is not entertaining a possibility; he is naming an arrival. Something that used to be there is not there in the same measure, and he says so directly, in a prayer, without one word of apology for it.

And then look at what he actually asks for. Not for the strength back. He asks not to be cast off.

That is a very specific fear and it belongs to a particular kind of man. The fear is not poverty. It is that reduced capacity leads to being set aside, quietly, by people who mean nothing unkind by it.

You are permitted to name a strength that has failed without a word of apology for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has never said anything of the kind out loud. It is written into Psalm 71:9 that an older man prayed exactly that and it was kept, and Scripture leaves the request in the prayer book unedited.

And notice the request is about belonging rather than about supply.

You have been afraid of the setting aside rather than of the shortfall, and the written word puts that fear in a prayer rather than treating it as vanity. The Spirit of God is the one who is present when a man admits what he is actually frightened of, and Psalm 71:9 asks not to be cast off in exactly those words.

What withdrawing actually does

Now the hard part, and I will say it once and plainly, because you would not thank me for circling.

The plan to be a bit unwell does not protect anybody. It protects the appearance of a man, and it costs the day a person.

And here is what will actually happen, which the plan does not follow through. They will not conclude that money was tight. That thought will not arrive, because it has never once been made thinkable in that house. What they will conclude is something about you: that he is slowing down, that he did not want to come, that something has gone wrong that nobody is telling us about.

You will have swapped a fact about prices for a rumor about yourself, and rumors about a man's decline are very hard to correct once a family has one.

You were never going to be protected by a plan that removes you from the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man in the seconds before he says a true thing about money to his own family. Scripture has an old man ask plainly not to be set aside rather than arrange his own quiet exit, and Psalm 71:9 puts the plain request where the pretending would have gone.

And there is a second thing, and I want you to weigh it properly. Fifty years of providing has bought you something in that house that you appear to have forgotten you own. You have credit there. Not money. Standing. The right to say a true sentence and be met well.

You have standing in that house that you did not lose when the numbers changed, and it has never once been supplied by what you were able to cover. The Spirit of God is the one who reminds a man what he actually holds, and Psalm 71:9 is a request made by somebody who knew exactly whose he was.

One sentence, before you change anything

So here is what I am asking, and it is smaller than the plan already half built.

Tell one person the true reason before you change anything about the day.

One person. The one most likely to hear it plainly. In an ordinary voice, in a plain sentence: things are tighter than they have been and I cannot do what I have always done, and I did not want to make up a reason.

You are able to say the true reason rather than a serviceable one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies an older man's voice while he says a sentence he has avoided all his life. It is written into Psalm 71:9 that a man may say his strength has failed and ask to be kept anyway, and the written word carries that prayer without one word of shame attached.

I am not telling you what to spend or what to bring. I am not going to promise you that the money turns up, and any man who tells you it does because you have been faithful has told you something the Bible does not say and has done you an injury.

What I am telling you is that the sentence is smaller than the plan, and it leaves you in the room.

You are staying in the room rather than arranging your own absence, and the written word never once asks a man to be able to cover something before he is allowed to be present. The Spirit of God carries a man through the two minutes after he says it, and Psalm 71:9 asks for belonging rather than for the strength to come back.