The Word You Took Out

Simon changed one word about four years ago, and he did it to be kind, and he has never used the old one since.

He is precise about language. He always has been. It is one of the things people like about him and one of the things people find slightly tiring, and he knows both of those and has made peace with it.

The word was accurate. That is the thing. It was not harsh, and it was not a technical word being wielded to make anybody feel small. It was simply the correct name for a thing, and he used it the way you use the correct name for a thing, without any particular weight.

And once, in a room, somebody flinched at it.

Not dramatically. He very nearly missed it. There was a small movement around the eyes and a slight change in the room temperature that lasted perhaps a second, and Simon, who notices things, noticed it, and the next time the subject came up he used a softer word instead.

The softer word is not a lie. That is what makes this the small sale and not the large one. It is a perfectly decent word. It is roughly ninety per cent of the meaning and it is gentler on the ear and it kept the conversation moving, and anybody who accused him of dishonesty over it would be talking nonsense.

He used the softer one from then on. In that room, and then in the next room, and then generally, and then, at some point he cannot locate, in his own head.

And that is where it stopped being a courtesy.

He found this out on a Tuesday, alone, trying to pray about the thing itself, and discovering that he could not get to it. He had the soft word. The soft word was all he had. And the soft word, which is ninety per cent right, will carry ninety per cent of a thing, and the ten per cent it does not carry turned out to be the ten per cent he had come to God about.

He sat there for a while.

Now hear me, because a precise man will punish himself for this and I am going to take that off the table first.

Simon did nothing wrong in that room. Softening a word for somebody who has just flinched is not cowardice, it is care, and a man who cannot do that is not brave, he is clumsy. The kindness was real. It was the right instinct in the moment and I would do the same.

What happened afterwards was not a decision at all. It was language doing what language does, which is that a word you stop using stops being available, and a word that stops being available takes the thought with it.

You do not lose a word. You lose what only that word could carry.

You have your own version of this. There is something you used to name plainly, to yourself if to nobody else, and you have a gentler word for it now, and the gentler word is fine and true and slightly too small, and you have not been able to get all the way to the thing in a long time.

Nobody is calling you evasive. Nothing here is an accusation.

Something was traded, and what was bought was one second of comfort in one room, four years ago, and the payments have been going out ever since.

The oldest bad trade in Scripture, and the price was hot food

There is an exchange in Genesis that everybody knows and almost nobody reads closely.

And Jacob said, Swear to me this day; and he sware unto him: and he sold his birthright unto Jacob.Genesis 25:33

The famous detail is the stew. The detail worth noticing is the speed, and the fact that nothing in the text suggests Esau was lying to himself. He was hungry, and the thing he sold was invisible and long term, and the thing he got was warm and immediate and genuinely good.

That is not a story about a wicked man. It is a story about the exchange rate between something you cannot see and something you can smell, and it is in the Bible because that rate has never once been favourable and human beings have never once stopped accepting it.

And now hear what is already true over you. You are not disqualified by an exchange. That is not my reassurance: the written word says that in Christ you are made an heir, and an heir by promise rather than by performance, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who bears witness with your spirit that this is so.

And the word has not been taken from you. The word says God gives generously and does not upbraid, does not scold you for coming back for what you already had, and it is the Spirit who brings things to remembrance, which is precisely His stated work, and He does it without a lecture attached.

You did not lose it. It went out of use.

What is not being asked of you

Now I want to be very careful, because this is the paragraph where a message of this kind starts telling people to go and be blunt with somebody, and I have seen that do damage.

Nobody here is telling you to go back into that room and use the hard word. That is not what this is about at all. Kindness in speech is not the thing being repented of, and a man who reads this and decides to be plainer at other people's expense has understood the exact opposite of it.

The room is not the point. Your own head is the point. What is being handed back to you is not permission to be blunt with anyone. It is the ability to name a thing accurately when you are alone with God, which is the one place where a ninety per cent word will not do the work.

And I am not naming your room or your circumstance, because I do not know it, and I am not going to preach at a guess.

So hear what is not required. You are not being asked to be harsher with anybody. Nothing in Scripture makes precision a license, and the Spirit of God has never once used an accurate word as a weapon on somebody who was already flinching.

And four years of a softer word have not put you out of reach. He knows our frame and remembers we are dust, says the written word, and He has understood every prayer you have brought Him in ninety per cent language, including the ones you could not finish.