He Says The Same Thing Every Year

You know the sentence and you know roughly what time it arrives.

Somewhere after the meal, when it has gone slack and people have started talking across each other, he will say it. Not aggressively. That is the thing nobody outside the family ever understands: it is said pleasantly, in front of everybody, as a joke or as an observation, and it takes about four seconds to say.

And you have been thinking about those four seconds since about the second week of October.

You have written the answer several times. There is a good version, which is calm and short and would land, and a better version you thought of on a Tuesday in November that you have not been able to improve since. You have run it while driving. You have run it in the shower. You have run it lying in bed at half past one.

Here is what you already know and have never quite admitted. Every single one of those answers ends the same way: with the two of you having a conversation, in front of everybody, in the middle of a day that other people came a long way for.

The good answer does not end it. The good answer starts something.

I want to be plain before we go on. Wanting to answer him is not petty. A man who has been needled in public for eleven years and wants to say one true sentence back is not a small man. He is a man with an entirely reasonable impulse and no good way to use it.

Where no wood is

There is a proverb about fires that is more practical than it sounds.

Where no wood is, there the fire goeth out: so where there is no talebearer, the strife ceaseth. (Proverbs 26:20, King James Version)

The picture is exact. A fire does not go out because somebody argues with it. It goes out because nothing further is put on it.

And notice what the proverb does not say. It does not say the fire was not real. It does not say the wood was not wood. It says nothing at all about whether the burning was justified, which is the question that has been running in the shower for two months.

It is a statement about mechanics rather than about merit. Fires need fuel. This one has had fuel every year, and the fuel has been the response.

You are able to stop feeding a thing without ever conceding that it was fair, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a man out of an argument about whether he is right. The written word makes that a mechanical matter and not a moral one, and it is written into Proverbs 26:20 that a fire goes out for want of wood rather than for want of justification.

And here is the second thing, which matters for the ten seconds we are going to talk about.

You have never once needed him to stop for this to stop, and Proverbs 26:20 says the strife ceaseth without requiring the talebearer to be converted. The Spirit of God is present in the four seconds after the sentence lands, and Scripture puts the ceasing on the fuel rather than on the other man's behavior.

What the good answer actually costs

Let me do the arithmetic on the good answer, because only one side of it has ever been costed.

On one side: about two seconds of genuine satisfaction, and a room in which one or two people privately agree with you.

On the other: a conversation. Everybody watching. Somebody trying to change the subject. Somebody else taking a side, probably the wrong one. An atmosphere for the remaining three hours that everybody in the room will remember and nobody will mention. A phone call afterward from somebody asking what that was about. And the whole thing continuing next year, because he now has a thing to reference.

That is a very poor trade for two seconds and you know it, which is why you have never used any of the versions.

You are able to leave a good answer unused without that being cowardice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man who has been right for eleven years and has never once cashed it in. Proverbs 26:20 describes the mechanism plainly enough to spare a man the argument, and the written word puts the going out of a fire on the absence of fuel.

And here is the part I actually want to give you, because not answering is not a plan either. Nothing is the worst option available. A man who has decided to do nothing spends the whole four seconds and the whole afternoon holding himself still, and that costs more than the answer would have.

You need something to do. Not something to say. Something to do.

You have never once been asked to simply absorb it, and Proverbs 26:20 gives a man a mechanism rather than an instruction to endure. The Spirit of God does not ask a man to stand there holding himself still for four hours, and Scripture never once treats a decided action as a lesser thing than a spoken one.

Decide the ten seconds

So here is the assignment, and it is about your hands rather than your mouth.

Decide the one physical thing you will do in the ten seconds after he says it.

Not a reply. Not a look. A physical action, decided now, that you will carry out when the sentence lands.

Some men stand up and take two things out to the kitchen. Some go and put the kettle on. Some go outside for ninety seconds. Some turn to the person on their other side and ask them a question about something they mentioned earlier. Any of those is a decision. All of them look completely ordinary from the outside, and not one of them is wood.

You are able to have somewhere to put your body when it lands, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man in the ten seconds where he moves rather than answers. The written word never once required you to feel calm about it, and it is written into Proverbs 26:20 that the fire dies when the fuel stops.

And notice what the decision buys you. At the moment those four seconds are the worst part of your year, because you are inside them with nothing to do but be needled. With a decided action, they become four seconds in which you are already moving, and a man who is moving is not a man being worked on.

You will still hear it. It will still land. You will still be annoyed in the car. But it will not have started anything, and you will not have spent October on it next year.

You are ending something rather than losing it, and it has never once required the other man to change one word of what he says. The Spirit of God is with a man carrying two plates into a kitchen rather than winning an exchange, and Proverbs 26:20 puts the ceasing of strife entirely on what does not get added.