The First One I Ever Had

The first man who ever paid you has gone somewhere else, and you have not been right since Tuesday.

He was the first. There is a receipt somewhere with his name on it and it is the oldest piece of paper in this whole business. He gave you work before anybody had a reason to, when there was no evidence you could do it, and he kept giving you work for eleven years.

And now he has gone to somebody else, for reasons he gave you politely and which were entirely reasonable, and you shook his hand and said of course.

And you have felt ever since like a chapter closed, and not a chapter about him. A chapter about you. Something in you has taken his leaving as a report on the whole eleven years.

I am not going to tell you how to get him back, and I am not going to say a word against him, because he has done nothing wrong and there is no grievance here. I am going to talk about what to do with a man you are thankful for.

I thank my God upon every remembrance

There is a line at the start of Paul's letter to the Philippians that is about remembering people, and it is worth noticing what he does with the memory.

He is writing from prison to a church he loves, and this is almost the first thing he says.

I thank my God upon every remembrance of you. (Philippians 1:3, King James Version)

You have something to be thankful for here, and thankfulness has never once meant the loss did not sting. Philippians 1:3 turns a memory of people into thanks given to God rather than into an account to be settled, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to the back of a van on a gravel track at dusk.

Notice where the thanks goes. Not to them. To God, upon remembering them, which is a different movement altogether and a much better one.

Paul is in prison. Some of the people he is remembering are a long way away and some of them he will never see again. The thanks is not conditional on anybody still being there.

You are able to be thankful for a man who has gone, and it has never once required him to come back. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a prison greeting reach a man standing at his own tailgate, and Philippians 1:3 has the remembering turned upward instead of inward.

Why the first one weighs so much

Let me say why this particular leaving has taken four days, because it is not the work and it is not the money.

He was the proof. For eleven years he was the evidence that this was a real thing somebody chose, and some part of you has been leaning on him without knowing it. He was the first yes, and first yeses do a quiet amount of load bearing.

You were leaning on one man as evidence, and you have never once needed him to be that. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what he has been resting on, and the written word turns the remembrance of people into thanks given to God in Philippians 1:3.

And here is the thing you have been doing without meaning to. You have taken his ending and made it retrospective. As though the eleven years were provisional and his leaving has now revealed what they really were.

Eleven years happened. They are not undone by what came after them. Nothing he does now reaches back and changes one job you did in 2019.

You have eleven years that cannot be taken back, and they have never once depended on who is still there. His Spirit is the one who keeps a man's own history from being rewritten by a single Tuesday, and Philippians 1:3 gives thanks for people without requiring the relationship to be ongoing.

Thank God for him out loud

So here is the exercise, and it is not about him and it is not a message.

Thank God for that man, out loud, by name. For the first job. For taking a chance on somebody with nothing to show. For eleven years of work you would not otherwise have had.

You are able to thank God for a man who has left, and that has never once been pretending you are fine. Philippians 1:3 turns remembering into thanks, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that possible for a man who has been carrying a leaving for four days.

Say the name. That is the part that does it. A name said out loud in thanks does something that a general sense of gratitude does not.

Then do not send him anything. Not a thank you note, not a card. This is between you and God today, and a note would quietly be a reach for one more word from him.

You were never going to need a last conversation, and you do not need one now. The Spirit of God carries a man past the instinct to get a closing line, and the written word gives thanks upon every remembrance in Philippians 1:3 without writing to anybody first.