She has been a member of that church for thirty four years and she has not been through those doors in nine months.
Her son was thirty one. It happened in November and it happened fast and there is nothing anybody could have done, and she has stopped explaining that to people because it does not change how they look at her.
That homegoing was full. Standing room, the overflow open, the choir did everything he liked, and her sisters flew in from two states and the whole thing was, from the outside, exactly right.
And Pastor said, from the pulpit, over that casket, in front of six hundred people: God's timing is perfect.
He has been her pastor for nineteen years. He buried her mother. He prayed with her in a hospital hallway at three in the morning once and she has never forgotten it. He preached that service with tears going down his face the entire time and his hands shaking on the book.
And that sentence has kept her out of that building for nine months.
Not because she thinks he is a bad man. She does not. Not because she disagrees with the doctrine, which she could argue about with anybody. Because she cannot sit in that room and look at that pulpit without hearing it come off it, and because if she goes back she will have to smile at people, and if she smiles at people they will say she is doing so well.
She has told nobody. Her sisters think she is going. She listens to the broadcast in the kitchen on Sunday mornings with the volume low and gets in her car afterward like she has been somewhere.
If that is a Sunday anybody has spent in a kitchen, sit down here. There is a psalm that says the whole of it in one verse, and it is more honest than anything said in that building in November.
Looked for comforters and found none
Here it is. And it is not a psalm about enemies. Read it slowly.
Reproach hath broken my heart; and I am full of heaviness: and I looked for some to take pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.Psalm 69:20
I looked for comforters, but I found none.
That is written by a man surrounded by people. It is not a psalm from a wilderness. It is the report of somebody in the middle of a community, in a full room, saying that he searched the faces and did not find one person who was doing the thing that was needed.
And Scripture kept it. It did not add a note underneath about how he should have been more appreciative of the ones who showed up.
You are described exactly in that verse, and you were never ungrateful for standing in a full room and finding nothing. Psalm 69:20 is the written word taking the failure of comfort seriously without accusing a single person of malice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that report in the songbook for a woman in a kitchen on a Sunday morning.
Notice the word he starts with. Reproach hath broken my heart. Reproach is a word about being found wanting. And that is the thing hidden inside the sentence off the pulpit, because if the timing was perfect, then something in you that cannot accept it is out of order.
That is the injury. Not the theology. The reproach folded into it.
You have been carrying a reproach that Scripture never laid on you, and you were never out of order for being unable to receive a sentence. Psalm 69:20 puts a broken heart and an unfound comforter in the same verse, and the Spirit of God is not standing in that sanctuary waiting for a mother to come to terms with a phrase.
What that man was holding
Now let me stand up for your pastor, because nineteen years with that man is a great deal to lose to nine months.
Think about where he was standing. He was over the casket of a thirty one year old he had known since the boy was twelve, in front of six hundred people, with his hands shaking, and the entire room was looking at him to say something that would hold.
A preacher in that position has about four seconds and one job, which is to keep the ground from opening under six hundred people. And what he reached for is the biggest, oldest, most load bearing sentence in his tradition, and he reached for it because he needed it to be true right then as much as anybody in that room did.
He was not diagnosing you. He was holding a roof up.
And here is the thing that would break him: he does not know. Nineteen years and he does not know, because the one person who could tell him has not been in the building.
That is not a call to go and say something. That is your decision and this page does not get a vote in it. It is only to say that what he did was not aimed at you.
Right now, as you read this, you are free to keep every one of those nineteen years and put nine words on the floor, and you were never given a choice between the two. Psalm 69:20 names the absence of comfort without convicting anybody of anything, and His Spirit is not asking you to hold something against a man who prayed in a hallway at three in the morning.
The kitchen on Sunday morning is not backsliding
Now the thing that is quietly frightening you, and it needs saying out loud.
Listening to that broadcast on a low volume in a kitchen is not backsliding. It is a woman who cannot get into a room finding the only way in that she has.
The accusation that arrives at about eleven o'clock on a Sunday, the one that says a woman who cannot go to church has left God, is not from Scripture and it is not from your pastor and it is not from the Holy Spirit. It is arithmetic done by somebody in pain, and the arithmetic is wrong.
Nothing in the New Testament ties His presence to a room. The one time Jesus is asked directly about the location question, He tells a woman by a well that the hour has come when it will not be about the mountain at all.
And the church, when it appears in Scripture, is people. It is not a building even once. It is what is left when the room is taken away, and in your case what is left is six hundred people who love you and one of whom will be at your door tomorrow if you ring.
You are still His and you were never out of the church, and you were never disconnected by a doorway. John 4:21 has Him retiring the location question entirely, and the Holy Spirit has been in that kitchen with the volume low every Sunday for nine months.
So here is where this leaves you, in a kitchen, with a broadcast on low.
The God who is in that kitchen never said the sentence. That is worth hearing plainly, because nine months of hearing it come off a pulpit can make a woman think it came from Him.
Watch what He actually does at a graveside. He walks up on two sisters whose brother has been dead four days, and both of them say a version of the same thing to Him with an edge in it, and He is the only person in that garden who could have explained anything, and He does not say one word about timing.
He weeps. In front of everybody. And they said, behold how he loved him.
You are wept with by that same Christ, and you were wept with in November in a full sanctuary. Psalm 69:20 says the comforters were looked for and not found, John 11:35 shows what He does instead, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in that kitchen every Sunday morning since.
And I am not going to tell you the doors get easier. Comfort is His to give, in His own way and His own timing, and nine months out of a building is not a report on your faith or on thirty four years of membership.
But there is a second weight and it comes off today. You have carried a reproach that was never true, that a mother who cannot receive a sentence about timing has a problem with God. Psalm 69 stands in the written word as the permanent answer to it, and the Holy Spirit is not at that pulpit waiting for you to accept anything.
If the weight ever turns dangerous, and staying safe genuinely comes into question for you, call or text a crisis line where you live, 988 in the United States, and tell a doctor or a counselor the plain truth about the Sunday mornings. Getting another human being physically near you is not a failure of faith and it is not leaving your church. It is the same thing that man did in a hospital hallway at three in the morning.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in that kitchen, however low your voice goes. The authority to speak to what has kept you out of that room was given to you in Christ, and it does not rise or fall with where you were this morning. Scripture is the ground under every line and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it. And whatever He does with the ache afterward is His to decide, in His own way and His own timing.
- Sentence spoken over my son's casket, you are not the truth and you were never asked to be. Psalm 69:20 says a man looked for comforters and found none and Scripture never scolded him for it, and I set you down and I am not carrying you to another Sunday.
- Reproach that says I am out of order, get out in the name of Jesus. The written word has the Lord Himself standing at a grave and saying nothing at all about timing, and the Comforter is not at that pulpit waiting for me to accept a phrase.
- Lord, You wept in front of everybody instead of explaining the four days, as John 11:35 says. I thank You that You never once said that sentence over my son, and I am keeping my pastor and leaving his words on this table.
Psalm 69:20
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