She found out about her niece's birthday from a photograph.
Not maliciously. Somebody put it up, there was a long table in a garden with those paper lanterns, and there was her sister and her brother and the cousins from up the coast who she did not even know were down, and a cake with a number on it.
Nobody rang her. Nobody has rung her about a thing like that for about two and a half years.
There was no falling out. That is the part she cannot explain to people at church, who assume there must have been a row. There was no row. There was a period of about eight months where she got quieter about things and they got quieter back, and there were two conversations in which she was told she had changed, and one Christmas where somebody said something at the table about "her new thing" in a voice, and she laughed it off because it was Christmas.
And then, slowly, the way it actually happens, she stopped being in the group message. Not removed. Just not in the new one when they made a new one.
She sits with the photograph on her lap for a bit.
And here is the thing that has started happening in the last year, which is worse than the loneliness and which she has told nobody. She has begun going back over it looking for what she got wrong. She was too much about it in the first year. She should not have said that thing to her brother about his marriage, which she said once, badly, out of real love. She was preachy at the christening. There is a list now and she adds to it at about two in the morning.
If you have ever gone looking for your own fault to explain a silence, you know that photograph. And you know the sentence: this is not persecution, this is me being difficult, and if I had been better at it they would still be ringing.
He named this exact thing
Let me say the low thing first, because the low thing is the one keeping you up.
It is not the birthday. It is the audit. Two and a half years of going back through your own conduct at two in the morning looking for the sentence that cost you a family, and always finding one, because anybody who looks hard enough at their own first year of faith will find several.
So let us look at what He said, and notice that Luke's version is more specific than the one people usually quote.
Blessed are ye, when men shall hate you, and when they shall separate you from their company, and shall reproach you, and cast out your name as evil, for the Son of man's sake.Luke 6:22
Separate you from their company. That is the exact phrase, and it is not about violence and it is not about a mob. It is about being left out of the group. Being not in the new message. Hearing about the birthday afterwards.
He named the quiet version. He named the version that has no incident in it and therefore cannot be pointed at, which is the version that has been happening to you.
And blessed, again, does not mean it is fine. It means God's favor is resting on you, His face is turned toward you. He looks at people being quietly left out and says God is toward these ones.
You are inside a sentence Jesus said, and He described the specific thing that has been happening to you rather than a dramatic version of it. Luke 6:22 says separate you from their company, which is a garden table rather than a courtroom, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a first century phrase and lays it exactly over a photograph on a woman's lap.
The clause that decides everything
Now the four words at the end, because they are the ones that answer your two in the morning question.
For the Son of man's sake.
That is the clause that decides whether a verse is yours or not, and it is a real clause, and I am not going to blur it. If a person is left out because they are exhausting, that is not this verse. If somebody is avoided because they correct people at christenings, that is not this verse either, and pretending otherwise makes a martyr out of a nuisance.
So let us be honest about your list, since you have been adding to it for a year.
You were probably too much in the first year. Almost everybody is. You said the thing to your brother badly. That was real and you know it was real, and the fact that it was said out of love does not make it well said.
And none of that is why you are not in the new group message.
How do you know? Because the drift started before the christening and it followed the shape of the thing itself. You got quieter, not louder. There were two conversations about you having changed, which is not a complaint about tact, it is a complaint about direction. And somebody said "her new thing" at Christmas in a voice, which is not a response to being preached at, it is a response to what you now are.
You have been sorting your own conduct for two years looking for a cause, and the cause was named in the sentence before you started looking. Luke 6:22 puts the reason in the verse itself, for the Son of man's sake, and it is the Holy Spirit who convicts about actual faults rather than manufacturing a general case against a person, which is the difference between conviction and the list you make at two in the morning.
Apologize for the thing you said to your brother. Genuinely, once, without attaching anything to it. That is a real debt and it is yours. And then stop paying a debt you do not owe on top of it.
Leap for joy, which is not what anybody feels
Now the instruction that comes next, because it is startling and people skip it.
Rejoice ye in that day, and leap for joy: for, behold, your reward is great in heaven: for in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets.
Leap for joy. That is a physical instruction and it is absurd on the face of it, given a photograph on a lap.
But look at the reason He gives, because He gives one, and it is not the reward. He mentions the reward and then He gives a second reason and it is the one that does the work: in the like manner did their fathers unto the prophets. In other words: what has just happened to you is the family marking. It is the thing that has always happened to people in this line. It is not evidence that you got something wrong, it is evidence of where you now belong.
Which is exactly the opposite of the conclusion you have been drawing at two in the morning.
You have a marking rather than a black mark, and Jesus gave it that name before it happened to you. Luke 6:23 names the prophets as the precedent, and it is His Spirit who rested on that whole line of people, so the company you have joined is the reason for the empty chair rather than a consolation for it.
I am not going to tell you the family comes back. I have no idea and nobody does. Keep sending the birthday cards, keep answering the phone if it rings, keep loving them out loud in a way that costs them nothing, and leave the door on the latch. That is all anybody can do and it is not nothing.
So here is what I want to put in your hands with the photograph still on your lap.
Stop the audit. Not because you are faultless, and not because the thing you said to your brother did not land badly. Stop it because you have been looking for a cause that was already named, and looking for it has been the actual injury for a year now.
You are blessed, this evening, with a garden table you were not at, and blessed means God's face is turned toward you here. Luke 6:22 says blessed are ye when they separate you from their company, in the second person, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been the reason the drift went the way it went rather than a fault in your handling of it.
Take the word. Not the two in the morning version. His. Say it over the two and a half years you have actually had, the lanterns, the new group message, the voice somebody used at Christmas, and mean by it what Jesus meant: God is toward me, and this is what this line has always looked like.
Then ring your brother about the one real thing, and say it once, and do not attach anything to it.
You have joined a company that goes back a long way, and the empty chair is the evidence of that rather than the evidence against you. Scripture gives the prophets as the precedent, and His Spirit is the one who has rested on that whole line, which means you are not the first person to hear about a family gathering afterwards.
Declare this over yourself
Say this out loud with the photograph in front of you. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing to be called what God calls you came with Him and not with the family's approval. Scripture is under every line here and the Holy Spirit carries it, not the steadiness of your voice at two in the morning. What He does about that family is His to decide, in His own way and in His own time, and I am not going to guess it for you. Your part is to say it and mean it, and to ring your brother about the one real thing.
- Empty place at a table I hear about afterward, you are a chair and you are not a report card on how I handled it. Luke 6 says blessed are ye when they separate you for the Son of man's sake, and He put the reason for it in the sentence.
- Audit I have been running on myself since two years ago at two in the morning, get out, in the name of Jesus. It is written that the same thing was done to the prophets, and the Spirit convicts about what I actually did rather than building a general case against me.
- Lord, You named this exact thing before it happened to me and You called it a marking rather than a black mark. I am ringing my brother about the one real thing tomorrow, and I am leaving the door on the latch for the rest.
Luke 6:22
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
