He knows the number to ring and where the certificate goes and which of the cousins to tell first so the news travels in the right order.
He learned it at twenty six with his father, and did it again at thirty four for an uncle, and again at forty one when his sister's husband died in a way nobody in that family talks about properly, and again in March.
Four times. Same job.
He carries. He makes the calls. He is the one who says the words at the door when people arrive, and the one who goes and gets the extra chairs, and the one who stands at the edge of the room during the part where everybody cries, watching, in case somebody goes down.
Somebody usually does. He has caught three people at four funerals, twice by the arm, once properly, and he has never told anybody that.
He is fifty three.
And in March, at the end of the day, he was carrying two trays through to the kitchen at about ten at night while the house was still full, and his aunt said to him, in passing, without stopping, "You are so good at this."
And he said, "Somebody has to be."
He has thought about that exchange more than about anything else that happened that week.
Because it is true. Somebody does have to be. There is no version of that day that works without somebody doing what he does, and if he stopped, the whole thing would land on his sister, who could not carry it, and he knows that, and he would do it all again on Thursday.
It is just that at four funerals, in twenty seven years, nobody has ever sat down with him.
Nobody has done anything wrong. There is nobody to be angry with. The man who is on his feet with the chairs is not a man anybody thinks to sit down with, and that is not neglect, it is geometry.
You know the job. Yours may not involve funerals at all. But you know what it is to be necessary in a room where something terrible has happened, and to have been necessary so many times that nobody has ever imagined you as anything else.
The one being comforted has no job
Let me name the pit before we go to the book, because if this becomes a criticism of your family it will be both untrue and useless.
The pit is not that they have failed you. The pit is that in twenty seven years you have never once been in the other position, and so the muscle for it has never been built, and now, in a year when you need it, you would not know what to do if somebody did sit down. You would get up and get them a drink. You know you would.
Here is a sentence in which the comforted man has no job at all.
As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you.Isaiah 66:13
Read the two roles in it.
One comforts. One is comforted. And the one being comforted does not fetch anything, does not carry anything, does not manage the room, does not stay on his feet in case somebody goes down. He is not doing a job. There is no job in that verse for him.
And notice who chose the picture. God did, about Himself, in the first person. Nobody proposed it to Him.
Here the line goes in the same paragraph, because on this ground the two never travel apart. God is neither male nor female. Numbers 23:19 says God is not a man, and He is not a woman either; He is spirit. Isaiah 66:13 is a simile God selected to say what His comfort is like. It does not make God a mother, He is never addressed by a title Scripture does not give Him, and the picture stays in the form He gave it. Scripture uses a father's language for Him constantly and a mother's deliberately, and this is one of the motherly ones, and it is His own.
You are the one being comforted here, and you were never the only person in the family who could not be sat down with. Isaiah 66:13 gives the one comforted nothing to do, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the comforting, and it is not handed to whoever made the phone calls.
Take that with the trays still in your hands, and know it is not my sympathy, it is His own sentence. You are being comforted by God, and there is no job in it for you. Isaiah 66:13 has the whole of the doing on one side, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the comforting, and He does not need you upright and useful in order to do it.
You have been on the platform for twenty seven years.
You are not the one who has to hold this family up tonight, and you were never the only person in the room who could not be sat down with. Isaiah 66:13 says so will I comfort you, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the comforting, which is not a job that gets handed to the man who made the phone calls.
That is not a fault and it is not a tragedy, and I am not going to tell you to stop, because your sister could not carry it and you know that and so do I. The job is real and it is yours and it will be yours again, and there is honor in it that nobody in that family has ever put into words.
What has to change is not the job. It is that you have never once been in the water.
So get in somewhere nobody needs anything.
Not at a funeral. Not in a room with your family in it, because in a room with your family in it you will be on your feet inside four minutes, and that is not weakness, it is thirty years of training and it is not switched off by wanting to.
Sit down in a chair in your own house when it is empty. Read the verse with your own name in it, and then stay in the chair.
You are held while you are doing nothing, and the holding is not something you have to be upright for. That is Isaiah 66:13 with no job in it anywhere, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the comforting, and He has been at it for twenty seven years in a man who has been on his feet at the edge of every room.
And your aunt in the kitchen in March was not making a demand of you. She said a true thing while passing with a tray, and she was right, and there was nothing under it. Let that one be simple.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, sitting, in an empty room. You are in Christ, and the authority to speak over twenty seven years of a role is delegated to you in Him; it does not depend on your knowing how to be comforted, which you do not. These stand on what is written in Isaiah and are carried by the Holy Spirit, not by anybody sitting down with you. When somebody does, and who, is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own timing.
- Job I have taken at four funerals, you are not the whole of me and you do not get every room, and I say so in the name of Jesus. Isaiah 66:13 says God comforts as a mother comforts, and the one being comforted in that verse has nothing at all to carry.
- Geometry that has kept me on my feet at the edge of every room for twenty seven years, you have no place in this chair tonight. It is written that He chose the comparison Himself and that He is neither male nor female, and His Spirit does the comforting, which never required me upright.
- Lord, You comfort me the way a mother comforts, and there is no job in it for me. I sit down in this chair and read it out loud with my own name in it, and I stay down for a minute while something goes on needing doing.
Isaiah 66:13
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