I Mixed Up The Labels

The whole thing took about sixty seconds.

You handed the first one over. Wrong person. She opened it and looked confused and then somebody said a name and then somebody laughed, kindly, and then you had to take it back out of her hands, which is a thing nobody has ever done gracefully in the history of the world.

Then you got the second one to the wrong person as well, because by then you were flustered and the whole system had collapsed.

And it was fine. Everybody laughed and nothing was ruined and somebody made a joke and the afternoon carried on and within ten minutes the room had moved entirely on.

The room moved on. You did not.

And it has become something. Not a memory. A theme. It has attached itself to a set of other moments and formed a story about the sort of man you are, and it comes up whenever you are about to do anything in front of people.

There is a scene in Luke where somebody with a genuinely bad thing to explain never gets to explain it, and it is worth looking at what happened instead.

The father ran

Here it is.

But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him. (Luke 15:20, King James Version)

The son had a speech. It is recorded a few verses earlier and he had clearly worked on it. It named what he had done and it proposed a reduced position for himself afterward.

He never got through it. The father ran before the speech and it was never once required.

You have a speech that is never going to be needed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who recorded the order of events. Luke 15:20 has the father running while the son is still a great way off rather than after he has explained himself, and the order is the whole thing.

Now the distance, because it is stated precisely.

When he was yet a great way off. Not at the door. Not in the yard. At the point where he was still only a shape on a road, before any conversation was possible.

The welcome was already running while the explanation was still miles away.

You are met before anything is accounted for, and it is written that the father saw him a great way off rather than that he waited to hear it. The Spirit of God is the one who set the distance in that account, and He set it deliberately far.

And the physical detail is not decoration.

Ran. Fell on his neck. Kissed him. That is undignified, and it is a father in that culture doing something no man his age would do in front of a village.

The story deliberately puts the father in the position of looking foolish in public, and never once treats that as a cost.

You have been shown a public foolishness that costs nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put a man running in the middle of that story. His word records the running without one word about how it looked, and He put him there in front of everybody.

Sixty seconds and eleven months

Now let me get the proportions on the table, because the proportions are the whole problem.

The event lasted about a minute. Eleven months have gone by inside it.

That is not a memory doing its job. That is a minute that has been given a role it was never issued, and the role is to explain something about you that you already half believed.

You have been using a minute as evidence for a conclusion that was already there, and it is written that the father ran before there was any account rather than after weighing one. The Spirit of God is the one who shows a man when a small thing is being asked to carry a large argument.

And here is what actually happened in that room, from everybody else's side.

Somebody got flustered handing things out. That is one of the most ordinary events that occurs at any gathering anywhere. It is so ordinary that it is genuinely likely nobody has thought about it since that afternoon.

The laugh was not at you. It was the sound a room makes when a small thing goes sideways, and it is warm rather than sharp, and everybody in that room has been on your end of it.

You were not being judged by anybody in that room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows exactly what a room was thinking. Scripture has a whole village watching a father run without the story recording one opinion, and it was thinking about the next thing.

And one more thing about the theme, said directly.

A story about the sort of man you are cannot be built out of one minute. It was built out of something older, and the minute was recruited into it. That is why it feels like evidence rather than like an incident.

You have been recruiting evidence for an old story, and it is written that the father ran a great way rather than that he assembled a case. The Spirit of God is the one who dismantles a story like that, and He dismantles it by running at a man rather than by arguing with him.

Tell it yourself, as a funny story

So here is what to do, and it will feel like the last thing you want to do.

Tell the story. Out loud, to one person, this week, as a funny one.

The whole thing. The wrong hands, the confused face, taking it back out of somebody's hands, the second one going wrong as well because the system had collapsed.

You have a story that changes the moment it is told rather than kept, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a thing said out loud smaller than a thing kept. Luke 15:20 has the son met before he ever gets the words out, and it works nearly every time.

Let me say why, because it will seem like making it worse.

A thing carried privately keeps whatever meaning was assigned to it in the first ten minutes. It never gets revised, because it never gets aired.

Told as a funny story, it has to become a funny story in your own mouth while you say it. And the person listening will laugh, and their laugh is new information, and new information is what the whole thing has been starved of for eleven months.

You are able to revise it by saying it, and it is written that the running happened while the account was still a great way off rather than after it landed. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies new information through a listener, and He usually supplies it in a laugh.

And then the second part, which is the practice.

When it comes up, and it comes up whenever you are about to do something in front of people, say one thing to yourself: that was sixty seconds and I have told it as a joke.

And then do the thing in front of people anyway.

You are able to go ahead while the story is still running, and the written word has a father cross the whole distance in public without any regard for how it looked. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a man moving before the feeling has agreed to anything.