It was said kindly, in a warm voice, in front of about ninety people, and everybody nodded.
She had a simple faith.
Beto was in the second row and he nodded too. It is what you do. The man saying it had known his mother for thirty years and had been good to her and there was nothing in his tone but affection.
And on the way out, in the car park, holding a paper cup, Beto found he could not put it down.
Because his mother worked nights for eleven years. She buried a husband at forty-four and raised three of them on what she had and did not once say a word against the man who left the family owing money. She had a woman in her kitchen most Thursdays for about a decade who had nowhere else to be, and Beto never knew the reason and still does not.
And when his brother was in the worst of it, she went there. Alone. On two buses. Repeatedly, for eight months, and came back and said nothing and did it again the following week.
None of that requires a vocabulary. All of it required something.
And simple is the word that got said, and it is not the wrong word exactly, and Beto has been unable to work out why it sat so badly for a year and a half.
He is forty-six.
He said it out loud to his wife eventually, in the spring, and it came out as: they described her like she had a small version of something.
And the reason it matters, and this is the part that took him a year to find, is that his own faith is exactly the same shape as hers.
So the word was not only about her.
And you may have heard a word like that used warmly about somebody you loved, and you may have nodded, and you may have been carrying it since without quite knowing why.
Jesus puts becoming like a child as the entry requirement
Take this off before we go a step further, because you have carried it for a year and a half and it was never yours.
You did not inherit a small version of anything. You never did. Scripture has Jesus naming what a person has to become in order to enter at all, and it is the Holy Spirit, not anybody's phrasing at a funeral, who decides what is large. Set it down here at this table. It is heavy and it has been in the car park with you since.
Now hear it, and hear how strong the wording is.
The disciples have asked who is greatest, which is a question with an assumption inside it. And He calls a child over and stands the child among them and says this.
Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.Matthew 18:3
Unless you change and become.
That is not a concession made to people who could not manage anything grander. It is a direction of travel, and it points the other way from the one everybody assumes, and it is put as a requirement rather than as a permission.
The word people mean when they say simple is nearly always this, and they mean it kindly, and they usually have not noticed that Scripture treats it as the destination rather than the starting point.
Your mother had arrived somewhere. That is written, and His Spirit is the one who brought her there over eleven years of nights and eight months of two buses, and He has never once called that small.
Now let me be careful here, because there is a ditch and I have no intention of putting you in it.
Nothing here says the man at the funeral was patronizing her. He was not. He had known her thirty years and been good to her and he was reaching for a word at a funeral, which is the hardest place on earth to find one, and he probably meant precisely what Scripture means and did not have the sentence to hand.
Do not carry anything against him. He is not what this is about.
And nothing here says that people with a larger vocabulary have a smaller thing. They do not. Some of them have both, and some of them got the words in order to serve people like your mother, and Scripture is full of learning and God gives it on purpose.
The point is only about the direction Jesus points, and Scripture puts becoming like a child at the entrance, and His Spirit is the one who does that in a person over decades.
Here is the tender part, and Scripture is gentle with it. The reason it took you a year and a half is that you were not really defending her.
She does not need it and you know that. You were listening to a word being put on a shape, and the shape is also yours, and you have been quietly wondering ever since whether what you have is the small version. His Spirit is the one who put it in you and He put it in her, and it is the same thing.
So here is the turn, and it takes six seconds and it is not a defense of her.
Say what you believe out loud, in your own words, using none of the specialist vocabulary.
That is the whole of it. Not a better word for your mother, which nobody needs and which she does not require. Not a conversation with the man from the funeral, who meant well and has forgotten.
The plain thing, alone, at full size, in the shape you inherited.
You are pointed at the destination and not stuck at the start. That stands written, and His Spirit is the one who brought your mother there and is doing the same in you, and neither of them has ever measured that in words.
I am not going to tell you what happens with the word or whether it stops sitting badly. That belongs to God and He works in His own way and in His own timing, and I will not put a promise in His mouth so this page can end well. What I can tell you is what is already yours, and what is already yours is the same shape she had, which Jesus called the entrance.
Say it out loud. Four ingredients, and nobody can reproduce it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these standing on your own, out loud, in ordinary words. Nothing here is a task and nothing here has to be earned; it is already yours in Christ, and it was in your mother before it was in you. Scripture is what these lines stand on, His Spirit is the one who makes them live, and the outcome is His, answered in His own way and in His own timing.
- Word said kindly in front of ninety people, you were the best a good man could find at a funeral and you are not a measurement. In the name of Jesus I set you down in this car park, because plain is not shallow, and what I have is the same thing they have, in fewer words.
- Question I have carried for a year and a half about whether mine is the small version, you were never about her at all. Scripture says unless you change and become like little children you will never enter, which makes it the destination and not the starting point.
- Lord, You brought her there over eleven years of nights and eight months of two buses, and Your Spirit is the one who did it and is doing the same in me. It is the same thing in fewer words, and I am saying it out loud today.
Matthew 18:3
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.