The Toast He Could Not Give

He said yes straight away. That is worth saying first.

There was no hesitation and no calculation. His cousin rang and asked him to speak at the thing, because he is the one who speaks at things in that family, and he said of course and meant it entirely.

Then he sat down to write it.

Four evenings. A notebook. He is not somebody who struggles with words and he has done this at eleven family occasions and once for two hundred people at a hall.

He got nothing.

Not a bad draft. Nothing. He would put a line down and look at it and know it was not true, and cross it out, and after four evenings there were two pages of crossings out and one sentence that he could not use because it was about the food.

And on the fourth evening he sat back and understood why.

They are celebrating the thing he has been waiting for.

Not a similar thing. The same thing, in the same family, and everybody in that courtyard knows he has been waiting and every one of them would be horrified to think it made a difference.

He is glad for them. He would take a bullet for that cousin. Both of those are completely true and neither of them helped him write a word.

If you have said yes to something and then found you could not do it, sit down out here. Nobody is going to tell you what that means about you.

Peter divides the labor, and only half of it is yours

There is a sentence written by a man who knew exactly what it was to carry something he could not put down, and the whole of it is in how the work is split.

Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.1 Peter 5:7

Two halves and two different subjects.

The casting is yours. That is the only instruction and it is a physical word: throwing something, getting it out of your hands and into somebody else's.

The caring is His. That is not something you do, produce, or feel your way into. It is stated as a fact about Him and given as the reason the first half is possible.

Notice what is not in the sentence. There is no requirement to understand the thing first, no requirement to feel better about it, and no assessment of whether you should have been carrying it in the first place.

You have somewhere to put this, and putting it there does not require you to feel differently first. 1 Peter 5:7 makes the casting an action rather than an emotion, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes it an actual transfer rather than a form of words, which means the four evenings with the notebook have an address and it is not your own chest.

Being unable to write it is not the same as being ungenerous

Now the thing that has been quietly decided over four evenings, which is not true.

You did not fail to write it because you begrudge them. That has already been tested, in the way people test things at two in the morning, and the answer came back clean: the gladness is real, you would do anything for that cousin, and you meant the yes. 1 Peter 5:7 says casting all your care upon him, for he careth for you, and it is written as a handing over rather than a test to pass, and it is the same Spirit who is called the Comforter.

You were asked to stand up and say out loud, in front of everybody, the exact shape of the thing you have waited years for, in a register of pure celebration with nothing else allowed in the room. Romans 12:15 puts rejoicing with them that do rejoice and weeping with them that weep in one line at equal weight, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept them joined rather than ranked, which means a room that only had space for one of the two was asking for half a man.

That is not a speech. That is a performance of a feeling you genuinely have, with a second feeling you also genuinely have edited out, and the editing is the part you could not do.

You are not being convicted here, and no case has been opened on you. Romans 8:1 says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and it is the Spirit of life named immediately after who made you free, which means the verdict you reached at that notebook was not issued by God.

And I am not going to tell you the waiting ends, or when. I do not know that and nobody writing to you from a distance does.

What I will say is the thing underneath the question. You are not being made smaller by this, whatever four blank evenings suggest. 2 Corinthians 4:16 says the inward man is renewed day by day while the outward perishes, and it is the Holy Spirit who does that renewing, which means the wearing you can feel and the shrinking you fear are two different things and only one of them is actually happening to you.

God is the one holding you, and He was in that room on all four of those evenings.