I Have Been Rehearsing An Explanation Since August

It has been the same figure for eleven years.

Not because anybody set it. It settled itself somewhere early on, and then it became the number, and then it became a quiet fact about the kind of man you are.

This year it cannot be that figure. It is not close.

And since about the second week of August you have been writing something in your head. It has grown. It has a beginning now, and a middle, and it explains the year without going into anything humiliating, and you have revised it in the truck and in the shower and lying awake.

You have gone over it enough times that it has stopped sounding like an explanation and started sounding like a defense.

Which raises a question worth sitting with for a second. A defense against what, exactly. Who has accused you of anything.

Nobody has. There is no charge. You have spent four months preparing for a hearing that is not scheduled.

There is a proverb that compares two dinners, and it settles this faster than anything else I know.

Better is a dinner of herbs

Here it is.

Better is a dinner of herbs where love is, than a stalled ox and hatred therewith. (Proverbs 15:17, King James Version)

A dinner of herbs. That is the plainest meal a person could put on a table. Greens. Whatever grew. Nothing killed for it and nothing bought for it.

And a stalled ox is the other end of everything. That is the animal fattened in the stall, the largest meal a household could put on a table, brought out for something that mattered.

You have a comparison in front of you that runs the opposite way to the one in your head, and the Holy Spirit is the one who set those two side by side. Proverbs 15:17 calls the smaller meal better rather than adequate, and He put the winner on the smaller side without any hedging.

Now the deciding word in the verse, because it is not the food.

Where love is. That is the whole hinge. The greens win because of what is in the room, and the ox loses because of what is in the room, and the size of the meal never enters into the judgment at all.

You are being weighed by what is in the room rather than by what is on the table, and it is written that a dinner of herbs where love is beats a stalled ox. The Spirit of God is the one who fixed the criterion, and He fixed it in a place where a thin year cannot reach it.

And notice something about the man serving the herbs.

He is not apologizing. There is no scene in that proverb where he explains the greens. He puts the meal down and the love is in the room and the verse calls it the better dinner, and nobody at that table is given a reason to think about the menu.

You have been shown a man who serves the small meal without a word about it, and His word never once has him accounting for the size of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man put something down and leave it there, which is a harder thing than it sounds.

A defense against nothing

Let me go back to the speech, because four months is a long time to carry something.

Where did the accusation come from. Not from your family. Not from the people you give to. Nobody in eleven years has ever said a word about the figure, and most of them could not tell you what it is.

It came from inside. It was built out of the eleven previous years and the man you have understood yourself to be, and then it hired a prosecutor and gave him a case.

You are the only person in this who has filed anything, and it is written that the room decides the dinner rather than the table. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man where a case actually came from, and He does it without adding a second accusation on top.

And there is a specific danger in a rehearsed speech, which is worth naming because it will arrive.

A speech that has been worked on for four months does not come out small. It comes out complete. And the moment it starts, everybody in the room understands that something significant is being disclosed, and the significance is coming entirely from the delivery.

You would be handing them the very thing you are trying to hide, and Proverbs 15:17 lets the small dinner stand without one word of introduction. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man from announcing a problem that nobody had noticed.

And here is the practical mercy in that.

They cannot see your figure. They have never seen it. Whatever difference exists this year exists in a document only you have read, and until you narrate it, it does not exist in that room at all.

You are carrying something invisible, and the written word settles the whole matter on what is in the room rather than on what anybody could count. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a private thing private, and He does not need it confessed to make it acceptable.

Let the speech stay where it is

So here is the instruction, and it is a subtraction rather than an addition.

Do not deliver it. Any of it. Not the short version, not the light version, not the version that arrives as a joke on the doorstep.

Give what you have. Hand it over. Say their name, or say nothing.

You are able to walk in there with the speech still in your mouth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a sentence back in a man. Proverbs 15:17 puts a plain dinner down without one line of commentary, and holding it back for ninety seconds is the whole of this year's work.

And expect the pressure, because it comes right at the door.

There is a moment as the thing leaves your hands where the silence feels enormous and unbearable, and every part of you wants to fill it with context. That moment lasts about four seconds and then the room moves on and it is finished.

You have four seconds to get through and nothing beyond them, and it is written that the love in the room is what makes the small dinner the better one. The Spirit of God is the one who stands with a man through four seconds, and He does not need longer than that either.

And there is one more thing worth saying, because it will be there afterward.

You may not feel any better having done it. The relief in this is not emotional and it does not arrive on the day. What happens is that nothing happens, and then a week later you notice that nothing happened, and the case quietly closes for lack of any evidence at all.

You are not required to feel resolved about this, and the Holy Spirit is the one who closes a case that a man opened against himself. Scripture weighs the dinner rather than the man's confidence about it, and He does it slowly and after the fact.