My Father Could Do All Of This

You have his tools, or you know where they went.

And you know how he was with them. You can picture the particular way he held a thing, and how he did not measure twice because he did not need to, and how a job that would take you a Saturday and a phone in your hand took him an hour and no fuss at all.

And you were there. That is the part that gets you. You were in the house while he did it, for years, and somehow none of it came across.

So there is a sentence you say, and I think you have said it out loud more than once. My father could do all of this and I can do none of it.

I want to look at that sentence carefully, because there is more than one thing hiding in it.

Some of you are grieving. The tools are the closest thing to his hands that you have left, and picking one up is not a practical matter at all.

Some of you had a harder time than that. He could do all of it and he did it alone, or he did it while you were told to stand back, or he did it and made sure you understood what he thought of you while he did.

And some of you have both of those at once, which is the most common and the hardest to say.

I am not going to sort out which one is yours, and I am not going to tell you what to feel about him.

He it is that doth go before thee

There is a sentence spoken to a man who was about to take over from somebody enormous, and the timing of it is the point.

And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed. (Deuteronomy 31:8, King James Version)

He it is that doth go before thee.

That is said to Joshua, and it is said while Moses is standing there. He is taking on work that a much more capable man had been doing, in front of a crowd who had watched that man do it for forty years, and everybody involved knew the comparison was going to be made.

And what he is given is not a comparison. Nobody tells him he will be as good as Moses, and nobody tells him he will surpass him. That whole axis is dropped.

What he is told instead is who goes ahead of him. The one who goes before you is not the man you are replacing. It is God, and He is already out in front of the ground you have not walked yet.

You are followed by nobody and preceded by God, and the man you are measuring yourself against has never once been the one out in front of you. Deuteronomy 31:8 answers an unbearable comparison by changing who is ahead rather than by settling the score, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a person off an axis they cannot win on.

The comparison cannot be settled and that is the mercy

Here is the thing about comparing yourself to him, and it is worth saying plainly.

You cannot win it and you cannot lose it, because he is not available to be measured against. He is either gone, or he is not the kind of man you could ask, and either way the comparison is happening entirely inside you with only one participant.

That means it never ends. There is no evening where you do a job well enough and the matter is closed. You could rewire a house and it would not close, because the person who would have to close it is not in the conversation.

And I want to say something about what he knew, because there is a way of holding it that is heavier than it needs to be. What he knew is not a debt. He did not lend you a skill that you failed to repay. He knew some things, and he is not here, and the not knowing them is a gap and not an unpaid bill.

You are allowed to honor him and learn it slowly at forty-eight, badly, off a phone, in a way he would have found funny. Those two things sit together fine.

You are learning it your own way and later, and it has never once been a debt owed to a man who is not here. The written word puts God out in front rather than a predecessor, and the Spirit of God is the one who ends a comparison that has only one person in it.

Pick up one of his tools

So here is the assignment, and it is small on purpose because this row is heavy.

Pick up one tool he left, and use it for something small.

Not the job he would have done. Something ordinary and easy: tighten a screw, open a tin, take something apart that does not matter. Put it in your hand and use it for its purpose, once.

And if that is more than you can do tonight, take it out of the bag and hold it and put it back. That counts and I am not saying that to be gentle. Some of you will find that this is not about competence at all and it will hit you sideways, and if that happens, put the tool down and let it happen.

Deuteronomy 31:8 says he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a garage with a man holding something that belonged to his father.

You are able to put his tool in your hand, and it has never once required you to be the man he was to be allowed to hold it. Deuteronomy 31:8 promises presence rather than a comparison, and the Spirit of God is the one who is standing there while you do.