He Did Not Ask For The Whole Story

The kitchen at her sister's house has too many people in it at ten past eight and everybody has somewhere to be.

Two children arguing about which cereal was promised. A school bag by the door with a strap that has gone. Somebody's PE kit in a carrier bag. The radio doing the traffic. Her brother in law reaching over three heads for the milk and apologizing to all of them at once.

She is at the end of the table with a mug she has not drunk from, in the chair they brought in from the other room, and everyone here has been kind to her for six weeks without once making her say why she is in it.

And while the toast is going round she is doing what she does every morning at this table, which is going through it in order. That call. That week she said nothing. That decision, the one everybody warned her about, and the smaller one after it that nobody knows about at all. It is not self pity. It is worse than that: it is accurate.

Because here is the thing you and she both know, and it is the reason mercy has felt like something happening in another room. You can trace every decision that led here, and most of them were yours.

What the word abundance means here, before anything else

There is a word over the door of this place and it needs saying plainly, at the start, before it can be misheard.

Abundance here does not mean money. It never has and it never will. It does not mean the thing that came down is coming back, and nothing on this page predicts what your life looks like in a year. Jesus said He came so that they may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10), and He said it about Himself as the shepherd of the sheep, which means the fullness on offer is fullness of life with Him in it, and not a replacement set of circumstances.

That matters at this particular table, because a person sitting in the ash with a mug they are not drinking does not need a promise about the future. They need to know what is true this morning.

You are being offered fullness of life with God in the middle of a ruin, and not a story about how the ruin turns out. That distinction is in the sentence Jesus said, and the Holy Spirit is very careful with people in the state you are in. He does not oversell.

The psalm was written by somebody who knew what he had done

Now come to the verse this whole message stands on, and notice who wrote it.

He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.Psalm 103:10

David wrote that. A man who had done things that were entirely, unambiguously his, and who never once in that psalm pretends otherwise. He does not say God overlooked it. He does not say it was small. He says God did not deal with him according to it.

Look at the sentence properly, because there is a softer version of it that everybody hears instead. It does not say God deals with us according to a reduced measure of our sins. It says not according to them at all. The relationship between what he had done and how God treated him was cut. That is what mercy is.

You are not being repaid, and that is not because the part that was yours has been quietly downgraded. That is what stands written in the psalm, and the same Spirit who moved a guilty man to write it is the one holding this in front of you now. The kindness you are receiving today is not proportional to anything.

And two verses further on, David says why he can be certain: for He knows our frame, He remembers that we are dust (Psalm 103:14). God has never once been shocked by you. He has known what we are made of since He made it.

The father did not wait for the end of the speech

There is a young man in one of Jesus' stories who worked out his speech on the road home. We know he worked on it, because Jesus tells us what he rehearsed: I have sinned against heaven and before you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son, treat me as one of your hired men.

He got some of it out. He was still speaking when his father started giving instructions to the servants about a robe.

That is not a father who did not care what happened. That is a father who was not going to conduct the hearing his son had prepared for. The speech had a use, and it was not the price of anything. It was simply a son telling the truth in the arms of a man who had already run down the road.

You have a Father who interrupts the speech, and He is not waiting to hear the full account before He is warm with you. That is exactly how it stands written in Luke 15, and His Spirit is not standing behind you with a clipboard while you get your dates right. Say the part that is yours. Say it honestly. It buys nothing, because nothing here is for sale, and it is still worth saying out loud.

Two things this page will not do, and I want you to hear both.

It will not tell you the part that was yours was not yours. That would be a comfort made of nothing and you would see through it before lunchtime.

And it will not tell you the collapse had a purpose. I do not know that. Nobody who tells you that knows it either, and a person handing you a reason for your ruin six weeks in has usually done it to make themselves more comfortable in the room.

The plainest paragraph on this page

If the accounting in your head has started to include the idea that everyone would be better off without you, stop reading and tell a human being today. In the United States you can call or text 988 and reach the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. Wherever in the world you happen to be, your local emergency number is the right number, and there is a crisis service in your own country. And whatever else, one person you trust, told today, out loud. Being in a ruin you had a hand in does not disqualify you from help of any kind, and God is not asking you to carry this without company.