I Say Fine About October

You have said fine about nine times this week and October is not fine.

It is not a disaster either. That is the part that makes the lying so easy. Nothing has collapsed and nobody is owed money. It is just that almost nothing came in, and you have no explanation, and every single person who has asked has got the word fine.

And it has become a job. You have a version now, with a bit of detail in it, about how things are ticking along and autumn is always a bit slower. You have used it on your brother, on a man at church, on a supplier, and on your own wife on Tuesday evening.

Which means you are now maintaining an account of a month instead of living a week, and the maintaining takes energy you do not have.

I am not going to tell you how to turn the month around, because that would be strategy and there is none of it here. And I am not going to promise that November is different. I am going to talk about one line from the middle of the saddest book in the Bible.

New every morning

There is a line in the middle of Lamentations that everybody knows from songs, and almost nobody reads what surrounds it.

The book is unbroken grief, page after page of it, and in the middle of chapter three there is this.

They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:23, King James Version)

You are met new each morning, and that has never once depended on the month going well. Lamentations 3:23 sits in the middle of a book of unrelieved grief and says the mercies are new every morning anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a truck outside a hall with keys in somebody's hand.

Read where it is. Not at the end, after things improve. In the middle, with nothing fixed, in a book that does not end happily in the chapter after it either.

The man who wrote that was not describing an upturn. He was describing God, in the middle of a situation that had not changed at all, and he was able to say two things at once, which is what honesty actually looks like.

You are able to hold two true things at once, and it has never once required the month to improve first. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a line from the middle of a lament reach a man standing in a parking area after a meeting, and Lamentations 3:23 says great is thy faithfulness without claiming anything has turned.

The cost of the account

Let me say what the maintained version is costing, because it is not honesty that is at stake so much as energy.

You are now running two things. There is the month, which is quiet, and there is the account of the month, which has to be consistent across nine conversations. And keeping an account consistent takes real attention, and you have been spending attention you needed for other things.

You were never required to manage what anybody thinks of the month, and it has never once been your job. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own version has been costing him, and the written word says the mercies are new every morning from the middle of unrelieved grief in Lamentations 3:23.

And there is a second thing, which is about Tuesday. You used the version on your wife. That is the one to look at, because she is not a supplier and she is not a man at church, and she almost certainly knew, and now she has the version instead of the truth and also knows she has the version.

That is not deceit and I am not going to call it that. It is a tired man reaching for a sentence that works.

You are able to give one person the true answer, and it has never once cost a household anything. His Spirit is the one who lets a man stop maintaining something, and Lamentations 3:23 holds a hard situation and God's faithfulness in one breath without resolving either.

One honest answer, then the work

So here is the exercise, and it is one person rather than a policy.

Answer one person honestly. Not nine. One. It has been a quiet month, I cannot account for it, and I am all right.

You are able to say a true sentence about a bad month, and saying it has never once been complaining. Lamentations 3:23 says two true things in one breath without waiting for a better situation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one honest answer possible for a man who has said fine nine times.

The last clause matters and it is not a performance. You are all right. A quiet October is not a crisis, and the true size of a thing is part of the honesty, in both directions.

Then do one ordinary piece of the work that nobody has asked for yet. Not something aimed at fixing October. Just the work, because the work is still here and your hands still know how to do it.

You were never going to be rescued by a better answer, and the work has never once been waiting on one. The Spirit of God carries an honest word past the habit of the prepared version, and the written word says the mercies are new every morning in the middle of a lament in Lamentations 3:23.