Fine At The Graveside

The first time he said it, he was standing on wet grass and somebody had a hand on his shoulder.

How are you holding up. And he said: fine. Just like that, flatly, and then he said it again about four minutes later to somebody else, and it worked, in the sense that both of them nodded and stepped back and the afternoon carried on.

That was in April. He has counted it since, roughly, and he thinks it is about ninety times. His sister. His boss. The man at the garage who did not know and then did. A woman at church who held on to his hand slightly too long and got fine for her trouble.

The word has done a job for him. Do not let anybody tell you otherwise. It got him through the wake, and the two weeks after, and back to work, and it is still doing that job at half past seven every morning.

But he has noticed something in the last few weeks. He said it to his son on the phone, and his son said okay dad, and there was a silence, and he could hear his boy deciding not to push. And he sat there afterward with the phone in his hand and thought: that word is now standing between me and the two people I have left.

You have a word. It might be fine, or grand, or not too bad. It got you through, and then it stayed.

Say what fine has cost, and do not skip it

Nobody has counted it, so let us.

It has cost him his son, at least a bit, in a year when neither of them can afford that. It cost him the woman at church, who was ready to sit down on a wall with him and got dismissed. It cost him the garage man, of all people, who lost his own wife eleven years ago and who was, for about a second and a half, offering something.

And it has cost him the practice. A man says fine ninety times and by the ninety first he could not tell you what the true answer is, because he has not had to have one since April.

You have been living behind one word since a wet Thursday in April, and God has never once been given anything else and been offended by it. Psalm 34:18 says the Lord is near to the broken hearted and saves such as are of a contrite spirit, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes near off a page and puts it beside a man with a phone in his hand at nine in the evening. The word has never once worked on Him, and He has never once required a better one.

Near, and the nearness does not wait for the true answer

There is one line built for a man who has said fine ninety times.

The Lord is near to them that are of a broken heart; and saves such as be of a contrite spirit.Psalm 34:18

Look at the tense and the timing. Near. Not comes near when a person opens up. Near, already, as a description of where God is standing in relation to a broken heart, before anybody has said anything at all.

Which means the ninety fines have not cost him one inch of proximity, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a felt fact rather than a doctrine about omnipresence. He has been at the graveside, at the garage, on the phone with the son, and at half past seven every morning since.

You are already close to and the closeness never once depended on your having a better word available. That is not a soft reading of a hard verse. The written word makes nearness a fact about Him rather than a reward for openness, and the Spirit is the one who makes being near feel like company rather than surveillance.

And let me say this once, plainly. The true sentence is not a duty. This is not one more thing to get right in a year where everything is already effortful, and if you say fine tomorrow you have failed nothing at all.

What the true sentence sounds like at half past seven

The constraints are the same as always, and they are gentle. True. Short. And it must not put him on display or make the other person responsible for him.

That rules out fine, which fails the first test now, though it did not in April. It rules out telling his boss what nine at night is like, which fails the third and which he would not do anyway.

What is left is small. Not great, if I am honest. Or: today is a hard one. Or, the one for his son: I am not fine, and I am all right, and I did not want you to worry.

You are allowed one true sentence for the two or three who have earned it, and everybody else can keep having fine. Psalm 34:18 puts the nearness first and asks nothing in return, and His Spirit is the one who makes four honest seconds possible without a conversation attached.

One plain sentence before we go on. If nine at night has gone somewhere heavier, if there are hours where carrying on is genuinely a question, please tell one real human being today, and if it is urgent, call your doctor or a crisis line before anybody else. That is not the word failing. That is what a true sentence is actually for, arriving properly, and reaching for it is obedience rather than collapse.