He Never Could Give Back And I Still Mind

He cannot. That is the whole situation in two words.

It is not that he does not. He never has been able to, not once, not in twenty years, and there was never a year in which it was going to be different.

You have always known that. You knew it going in and you have never expected anything and you have never once said a word about it to anybody.

And you mind.

Not much. A small amount, once a year, for about a day. It arrives, you notice it, it goes.

And in the hours it is there you build a case against yourself out of it. That a man who minds about a thing like that, from a person in that position, is a smaller man than he believed himself to be.

That case is the thing doing the damage here, and it is being built on very poor evidence.

What shall I render

Here is the verse, and it is a question.

What shall I render unto the LORD for all his benefits toward me? (Psalm 116:12, King James Version)

A man who has received a great deal, asking what he can possibly give back.

And the honest answer to that question, in the psalm and everywhere else, is nothing proportionate. He cannot. That is the whole situation and the psalm does not pretend otherwise.

You are looking at somebody in the same position as the man in that psalm, and the Holy Spirit is the one who left it as a question. Psalm 116:12 asks what can be rendered rather than announcing what will be, and the question has never had an adequate answer from anybody.

Now the important thing, which is what the psalm does next.

It does not stop. He goes on to say he will take the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD, and pay his vows, and offer thanksgiving.

None of those are repayment. They are all responses, and he knows the difference, and he makes them anyway.

You are watching a man who cannot repay and does something else instead, and it is written that he asks the question and then keeps going rather than resolving it. The Spirit of God is the one who set that pattern, and the pattern is that a gap in the accounting does not end anything.

And here is what the psalm never once does.

It does not condemn the man for noticing the imbalance. Noticing is the entire first line. He names the disproportion out loud and the psalm treats that as the beginning of worship rather than as a fault in him.

You have been condemned for the noticing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who left that noticing in as the first thing. The written word opens with a man naming an imbalance and calls it the start of something, and it is in there on purpose.

The case against yourself

Now let me deal with the case, because it has been running every year for twenty years.

The charge is that a decent man would not mind at all.

That is the whole case and it sounds obvious. But look at what it actually requires. It requires a man to have no feelings about a twenty year asymmetry, which is not a moral achievement. It is an absence of a nervous system.

You have been prosecuting yourself for being a human being, and it is written that the man in the psalm notices the disproportion in the very first line. The Spirit of God is the one who does not require anybody to feel nothing, and He has never once asked for that.

And here is the distinction the case has been missing.

There is a difference between minding and resenting. Resenting wants something. It presses. It changes how a man behaves toward somebody and it leaks out in tone.

Minding does none of that. It arrives for a day, it is noticed, and the man goes on exactly as before. In twenty years you have not once let it change anything.

You have been mistaking one of those for the other, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can tell a feeling from a behavior. His word names a gap without one word of accusation anywhere in it, and He has been watching both of yours for twenty years.

And one plain thing about him, said carefully.

He knows. Men in that position almost always know, and it usually costs them more than anybody realizes, and there is nothing either of you can do about the arithmetic of it.

Which means the kindest thing available to you is to keep it entirely invisible, and you have done that for twenty years without being thanked for that either.

You have been carrying two things and neither one has ever shown, and it is written that the rendering is impossible and the relationship continues anyway. The Spirit of God is the one who sees what has been kept out of sight, and He has seen all twenty years of it.

Forgive the minding and keep going

So here is what to do, and the first half is about a day rather than about him.

Say it out loud to one person. Not him. Somebody who is not involved.

I mind a bit, once a year, about a thing nobody could do anything about, and I have been treating that as evidence against me for twenty years.

You have a sentence that ends a twenty year case, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a sentence like that safe out loud. Psalm 116:12 puts the noticing in the first line rather than burying it, and out loud is where a case collapses.

And let me say why one person is enough.

A case that has only ever been heard by the man who built it will run forever, because there is nobody in the room to say the obvious thing. Said to one other person, the obvious thing gets said within about four seconds.

You have been the only judge in a court you also built, and it is written that the psalm asks the question in the open rather than in a man's own head. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the obvious thing in somebody else's mouth, and it lands differently from there.

And then the second half, which is the easier one.

Give again. Exactly as before, at the same size, at the same time, with the same manner. Nothing changes because of any of this.

You are able to keep everything exactly as it was, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a twenty year habit steady. Scripture has a man who cannot repay make his offering anyway, and it has been steady this whole time without help.

And when the day comes round next year and it arrives again, do one thing.

Say, out loud if you can, that it is here again and that it is not evidence about anything. Then go and do something, and it will be gone by the evening the way it always is.

You are able to name it without it meaning anything, and it is written that the disproportion gets named and the psalm keeps going. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a feeling arrive and pass without a verdict being attached, and that is the whole of what has been missing.