I Work And It Still Does Not Stretch

You work. That is the part that makes this different.

This is not a story about somebody who has not tried. You are out of the house before anybody is up, you do the hours, you take what comes up, and at the end of the month it still does not reach.

And most of what gets written about money assumes the problem is management. Track it, cut something, be more careful. You have tracked it. There is nothing in there that is not either a bill or food.

So the emotion that has settled in you is not sadness. I want to name that accurately, because everything written for people in your position assumes sadness and offers comfort, and comfort is not what you are carrying.

You are angry.

And you have nowhere to put it, because there is nobody to be angry with. Not your family, who did nothing. Not your employer particularly. And not God, because you are a believer, and being angry at God about money feels like exactly the sort of thing a man should not be.

So it stays in. And it comes out sideways, in the car, at small things, and then you feel worse than you did before.

Let me offer you a passage that does something with anger about a shortfall, out loud, in the middle of the Bible, without apologizing for any of it.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom

There is a passage at the end of Habakkuk that people quote the last line of and skip the first half of, and the first half is the reason the last line is worth anything.

Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls. (Habakkuk 3:17, King James Version)

Count what is in that list. Fig tree, vines, olives, fields, flock, herd. That is six sources of income and every one of them is gone.

You have a passage in the written word that itemizes a shortfall instead of explaining it away, and no month of yours has ever once been too plain to belong in that list. Habakkuk 3:17 spends a whole verse naming what failed rather than moving quickly to the comfort, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a working man see his own arithmetic written into Scripture.

Notice that the prophet does not say why. He does not diagnose it, and he does not suggest that better management of the vineyard would have helped. He lists it. Plainly, item by item, and the list is allowed to stand for a whole verse before anything else is said.

That is worth more than any encouragement in the chapter. The Bible does not rush this man to his conclusion.

You are allowed to say the whole list out loud before you say anything hopeful, and taking a verse's worth of time over it has never once been complaint. It is written that the prophet named six failures in a row and was not corrected for any of them, which is why your account of the month is not grumbling, and the Spirit of God is what makes a man's honesty feel permitted.

And read the whole chapter and it is worse than a list. Earlier on, this same man says God, how long shall I cry and thou wilt not hear. He is not being polite. He asks the question that people in church are told not to ask.

You are able to bring the angry version to God rather than the tidied one, and no sentence you have been holding back has ever once been too rough for Him to receive. The Holy Spirit is the one who carries a man's real words rather than his composed ones, and Habakkuk 1:2 has a man asking how long shall I cry, and thou wilt not hear, written down and never once corrected.

Yet, and what it costs

Now the second half of that verse, and I am not going to make it cheap.

Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:18, King James Version)

That yet is not a mood change. It is a decision made with the list still standing. Nothing in verse seventeen has been fixed by verse eighteen. The fields are still empty in the second sentence.

Which means this is not a man who cheered up. This is a man who decided where his gladness was going to be sourced from while the shortage was ongoing.

You are able to source your gladness somewhere other than the month's arithmetic, and doing that has never once required the arithmetic to change first. Habakkuk 3:17 leaves the empty fields standing right through the yet, and the Holy Spirit is what makes a decision like that possible in a man on a Thursday night.

And here is the practical thing, and it is what this whole article is for. The anger is not the problem. The anger is accurate. The problem is that it has nowhere to go, and so it is coming out on the people who did nothing.

An unspoken thing does not stay still. It leaks.

You are able to say it out loud in one place and stop it leaking into all the others, and speaking it has never once made you a man who complains. It is written that a prophet said the whole hard list and then said yet, in that order, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a man finally says the true sentence to somebody.

Say it, then take them out

So here is the assignment, and it is two things in the same week on purpose.

First: say the angry sentence out loud to one adult.

One person, whoever is safe. Your wife, a friend, a man at work you trust. And say the real version, not the acceptable one: I work full time and it does not reach, and I am angry about it, and I have nowhere to put that.

You are able to say the whole sentence to one person, and saying it has never once been you asking anybody to fix it. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in a conversation like that, and Habakkuk 3:17 has a man itemizing his losses out loud before he says one hopeful word.

You are not asking for advice. Say that if you need to. You are getting the sentence out of your chest and into the air, where it stops leaking sideways at your children over something small.

Second, in the same week: take them somewhere free on Saturday.

Both halves. Because the anger being real does not mean Saturday has to wait for it to resolve, and that is precisely the point of the yet in verse eighteen. The list stands. Saturday happens anyway.

You are able to hold an unresolved shortfall and a good Saturday in the same week, and one has never once had to wait for the other. Habakkuk 3:18 says yet I will rejoice with the fields still empty, and the Holy Spirit is with a man taking his children out on a day when nothing has been solved.