I Cannot Pay Them What They Are Worth

She is worth more than she is paid and you know the exact figure of both.

That is the part that makes it constant. It is not a vague sense of unfairness. You know the band. You know the number at the top of it, and you know what she does, and you have known for about a year that those two facts do not match.

You cannot change it. That is not laziness and it is not a lack of nerve. The band is the band and it is set somewhere else and there is no lever in your building attached to it.

So every day you stand in front of a woman who holds that place together on a Thursday and you pay her the number.

And here is what has started happening, and it is the reason this needs writing.

You have started being slightly less warm with her.

Not deliberately. It is a flinch. Every time she does something excellent there is a small cost to you, because excellence makes the gap larger, and something in you has begun to protect itself by looking away.

Which means that the one thing you actually could give her, which is being seen, has started to shrink because of the thing you cannot give her.

Let me be clear about one thing before the verse. If there is a question here about what you are legally required to do or permitted to do, that belongs with somebody qualified to advise on it rather than with an article. This is about something else.

There is a verse about wages and it is fierce, and it is not aimed at you.

Entered into the ears of the Lord

James writes something blunt about wages and about who hears.

Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. (James 5:4, King James Version)

Notice first who this is addressed to. Kept back by fraud. That is theft. Somebody with the money in their hand deciding not to hand it over.

That is not your situation and it is important to say so plainly. Nothing is in your hand being kept back. There is no fraud anywhere in this and the verse is not talking to you.

You are not the person this verse is warning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is exact about that. James 5:4 is aimed at wages kept back by fraud rather than at wages a person cannot reach, and He does not hand a woman a charge that is not hers.

Now the part that is for you, and it is the second half.

The cries are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Entered into the ears. That is a strong phrase. It means received and registered.

Which tells you something about God: His hearing is tuned specifically to the value of work. He is not indifferent to what a day's labor is worth. He tracks it.

You have been standing beside somebody whose real worth is registered somewhere it cannot be lost, and it is written that those cries enter into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps that account, and James 5 says He hears the value of work with particular attention.

That does not pay her anything. Nothing in this article does and nothing in it can.

What it does is take one weight off you. The gap between what she is worth and what she is paid is registered by God, exactly, and it is not registered as your debt.

You are not carrying a debt in this, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates those two. Scripture puts the hearing of it in God rather than the charge of it on the woman in the middle, and He does it without dismissing the gap.

The flinch is the part in your hands

Let me go back to the flinch, because that is the only thing here that is actually yours.

You cannot change the band. You can change whether that woman knows what her work is worth in the eyes of the person who watches her do it.

And right now she does not know, because the flinch has been quietly removing it. The cooling happens at exactly the moments where a person most needs to hear something.

She has almost certainly noticed. She will have read it as something about her, because that is what people do with a small coolness they cannot explain.

You have been withdrawing the one thing you can give because of the thing you cannot, and the written word puts the hearing of a labor's value at the very top. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a person the actual shape of a flinch, and He shows it in order to have it stopped.

And there is one more thing, which is the practical relief.

Telling somebody what their work is worth is not a promise about money. It never has been. People are not confused about that, and a grown woman can hold both facts at once: this is what I am worth, and this is what is available.

What she cannot hold is silence, because silence gets filled in with the worst available explanation.

You are able to say a true thing that promises nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land as honor rather than as a tease. It is written that the value of work is heard and registered by God Himself, and James 5:4 is where the value is taken seriously.

Say what it is worth, and what you can do

So here is the thing to do, and it is two sentences.

Tell her plainly what her work is worth. Be specific. Not a general compliment. Say the actual thing: nobody else could have held Thursday together like that, and it is worth more than the band allows me to pay.

Then say what you can and cannot do. I cannot change the band. Here is what I can do, and if there is nothing you can do, say that too.

You are handing over the whole of what is actually in your hand, and James 5:4 has the value of that work registered in the ears of God. The Spirit of God is the one present for that conversation, and He is not embarrassed by the honesty of it.

The reason both sentences are needed is that the first one on its own can sound like a preparation for something. The second one closes it and makes it an honor rather than a hint.

And when it is closed, the flinch has nowhere to live, because there is nothing being avoided any more.

You have been avoiding a conversation rather than failing a person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been listening to the value of her Thursdays for a year. The written word puts God's own attention on what a day's work is worth, and James 5 is where He says He does.

Then open in the morning and pay the number, because that is what is available, and she will know what you think of her.