I sat at the kitchen table with the laminate peeling up at the corner and stared at the stack of envelopes that constituted my current theology. The house was quiet in that oppressive way that happens when the furnace kicks off and the refrigerator hums its dying rattling song. I could smell the stale scent of the dark roast coffee in my mug and the lingering odor of the lemon floor wax my wife used to scrub away her anxiety earlier that afternoon. I have spent thirty years sitting in beige rooms telling couples that God provides and that the lilies of the field do not toil but tonight those lilies looked a lot like foreclosure notices and the birds of the air seemed to be circling like vultures. I felt the specific heavy exhaustion that settles into the bones of a man who has played by the rules and still lost the game. We preach about the God of the breakthrough and the God of the mountain but we rarely talk about the God of the arithmetic who watches us subtract the light bill from the grocery money and come up with a negative number. I rubbed my eyes and felt the grit of a sixteen hour day and the sheer weight of being the priest of a home that was financially sinking. I thought about the disciples in the boat and how terrifying the water looks when it is dark and you are tired and the carpenter in the back seems to be sleeping through the storm. I wanted to wake Him up but I was afraid He would ask me why I had bought the second car or why I had not saved more when the harvest was good. Shame is a cold companion at two in the morning and it sat in the empty chair across from me and mocked my sermon notes.
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