Same Time Next Saturday

"Same time next Saturday, then? The fourteenth. Who's in?"

It is said across a bench by a man tying his boots, to nine other men tying theirs, and it lands in the ear of one of them like a stone into a bucket. The others are already answering. In. In. Can't, it's my nephew's thing. In. He hears himself say "yeah" and he goes on pulling the lace tight, and the lace is very interesting to him for a moment, and then the ball is rolled out onto the pitch and everybody stands up.

The fourteenth is his brother's birthday.

His brother played left back on this same scuffed pitch, badly and with enormous joy, and there is not one man on this bench who did not know him, and not one of them has thought about the date, because why would they. It is a Saturday. It is a game. He does not want them to remember. And he cannot bear that they will not. Both of those are true at the same time, and he found out this month that a person can carry two things that heavy at once and still tie a boot.

He has been bracing since the calendar turned. Not thinking about it, exactly. Bracing. The way you tense before a cold shower. He has caught himself doing the sums: what he will be doing at ten in the morning on the day, whether the family will do the churrasco they always did, whether he wants them to, what he does if his mother rings, what he does if she does not. He is not afraid of the grief. He knows the grief. He is afraid of the day. One day, with a number on it, coming down the calendar at him like a train he can see from a long way off, and everybody around him buying tickets for it as if it were an ordinary Saturday.

That is you on the bench, isn't it. Not the whole grief. You are not asking me for the whole grief. You are asking me how a person gets through one specific date, with a number on it, when the rest of the world is going to play football on it. That is a smaller question and it is the one I came to answer.

He does not arrive on the day when you do

Let me say the weight plainly, because it has been sitting in your jaw for weeks and nobody has named it.

It is the sums. The rehearsing. The way the date has already taken the days before it hostage, so that the fourteenth is being lived in advance, over and over, and every version of it goes badly. It is not knowing whether you want it marked or want it left alone, and being certain that whichever you choose you will get it wrong. It is the tiredness of holding two opposite wishes at once. And under all of that, quieter, the fear that you have to do the day well. That there is a right way to get through it, and you do not know the way, and everyone will be watching, and your brother would have known.

I am not going to explain the day to you. There is no reason for it, no lesson in it, no plan I can see behind it, and I would be lying to you if I offered one. What I have is not an explanation. It is a Person, and a thing that Person does with days.

The Lord himself goes before you and will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed.Deuteronomy 31:8

Look at the order of it. Goes before you. Not walks in beside you at the same moment. Not turns up when it starts. He goes ahead. He is already on the fourteenth. He is standing in it now, while you are still on the bench, and when you get to it, whatever it looks like, He is the one who was there first.

You have Someone on that day already. I am not saying that to make you feel better; it is written, and it was written to a people about to walk into a place they had never been and were frightened of, and the Holy Spirit takes those words and does with them now what He did then, which is to go ahead of a person into the thing they are dreading.

You are walked into on the fourteenth rather than left to arrive at it, and you were met that way on every morning since the calendar turned. Deuteronomy 31:8 says the Lord Himself goes before thee and will not fail thee nor forsake thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing in a day a man is still weeks away from.

Behind and before

David put it another way, and it is worth having both.

You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me.Psalm 139:5

Behind and before. He is on the days after the fourteenth as well as the days before it. He is on the fourteenth. There is no square on your calendar He has not already stood in. And "lay your hand upon me" is not a hand that steers or a hand that pushes. It is the hand a brother lays on your shoulder while you tie your boots, and does not take off.

You are hemmed in on every side of that date, and hemmed in is not trapped, it is held. Scripture says the hand is already on you, and the Spirit is the one who makes a line from a psalm feel like weight on your shoulder instead of ink on a page.

Now hear the thing that will let you breathe. Nowhere in either passage does it say and you did the day well. It says He goes before, He is with, He does not leave, do not be dismayed. It does not grade you. The whole weight of "getting through it properly" that you have been carrying since the month turned is a weight nobody handed you. He is not waiting on the fourteenth with a scorecard. He is waiting on the fourteenth with a hand.

You are free of the requirement to do that day well, and you were never handed it in the first place. That is not permission I am giving, it is what His word does not require. Jesus called the Holy Spirit the Comforter, the one called alongside (John 14:16), and a Comforter is not sent to a person who is managing beautifully. He is sent to the one on the bench who said "yeah" and stared at his laces.