Thanked at a Funeral

The service had finished and people were doing the thing people do outside afterwards, which is standing about in coats not quite ready to leave.

A man he did not know came over. Late fifties. Said, are you Ray. And he said yes, and the man said, I have been trying to work out how to say this for about twenty minutes.

And then he told him.

Nineteen years ago, in circumstances that are not mine to describe, Ray had done a thing. It took him one afternoon and part of an evening. He remembers it clearly enough, and had always thought of it as a small piece of practical help offered at an awkward moment, and had assumed it had gone the way most such things go, which is nowhere in particular.

The man at the graveside told him, in four sentences, what had actually happened afterwards. It involved a marriage staying together, and a child, who is now twenty six and was at the service, and a chain of consequences that Ray had known nothing whatsoever about for nineteen years.

Then the man shook his hand with both of his and said something about being glad to have finally said it, and went to find his wife.

And Ray stood in a field in his good coat and did not know what to do with his body.

He has not slept properly since. Eight nights.

Here is the difficulty, and it is not what anybody would guess. It is not that he doubts it. The man was clear and unemotional and had obviously prepared it. It is not that he wants credit; he has told nobody, including his wife, which is unlike him.

It is that he cannot fit it in. One afternoon, nineteen years ago, and a life he did not know existed. There is no container in him the right size for that information. When he tries to hold it he feels something closer to vertigo, and the only thing he has managed to do with it so far is to keep taking it out and looking at it at about four in the morning.

You will have your own graveside. The four sentences that told you something you cannot fit anywhere.

The psalm that redirects the whole thing

There is a psalm that opens with a line people quote and rarely finish, and the shape of it is exactly the shape of a man in a field.

Not to us, O Lord, not to us, but to your name give glory, for the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness!Psalm 115:1

Read the repetition. Not to us, not to us. He says it twice. Whatever is being redirected here is substantial enough to need saying twice, which tells you something: this is not a small deflection of a compliment. This is a man with a great deal in his hands.

And notice that the psalm does not say the thing did not happen. It does not minimize the event. It moves the address. There is glory in play, real and weighty, and it is going somewhere, and the psalmist is standing in the path of it saying, not here, there.

So take it plainly: you are in the path of something that has an address, and the address is not you, and that is what Psalm 115 says in its own words, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes an old song and lays it down in a field in a good coat at four in the morning.

Which solves the container problem, and this is the specific mercy here. His difficulty was that there is nothing in him the right size. That is correct. There is not, and there was never going to be, and it is not a defect in him. A nineteen year chain of consequence involving a marriage and a child is not sized for one man's interior, and the vertigo is what happens when a person tries to store something that was only ever meant to pass through.

The psalm does not give him a bigger container. It tells him he is not the destination.

You have been trying to hold what was only ever passing through you, because the written word redirects the glory rather than shrinking the event, and His Spirit is what makes that reach a man who has been taking a thing out and looking at it for eight nights.

And notice the reason the psalm gives for the redirection, because it is not what a reader expects. Not because we are unworthy, which is the sentence most people supply for themselves. For the sake of your steadfast love and your faithfulness. The glory goes there because that is where it came from and because those two things are what the whole chain was actually made of. Nineteen years of consequence is what steadfast love looks like moving through an afternoon. You have been the shape a faithfulness took on a Tuesday nineteen years ago, and Scripture is what says that rather than my flattery, and His Spirit is the one who lets a man hold that without either shrinking or swelling.

Nothing here is being taken from him

Now the guardrail, because there is a bad version of that section.

Nobody is telling Ray that he did not do it. He did do it. The afternoon happened, at some inconvenience, and the man at the graveside was right to come over, and the twenty six year old exists. Redirecting glory is not the same as denying the event, and a version of this that leaves him feeling erased has misread the psalm entirely.

And nobody is telling him to have said it was nothing. When the man shook his hand, the right response was thank you for telling me, and not anyone would have. The elders in Revelation receive the crowns before they cast them, and both motions are in the scene, and skipping the first one is not humility.

Nor is the afternoon an entry anywhere. There is no account. A crown in Scripture is placed on a head by somebody else, always, and the throwing down comes after the placing.

You are held by a regard that did not rise at the graveside, because the written word puts our standing on Christ rather than on our record, and His Spirit is what makes that a floor rather than a phrase. You have nothing that you now have to live up to, and Scripture is what settles that, and His Spirit is what stops eight nights of vertigo from becoming a weight a man carries for another nineteen years.