He Was The One Who Carved

There is a moment coming and everybody in that room knows about it and nobody has mentioned it.

For forty years your father did one particular thing on that day. It was not a large thing in itself. It took about six minutes and it happened at the same point every year and he did it the same way and everybody watched him do it.

And this year somebody has to.

And it is going to be you. Nobody has asked. It is simply that of the people in that room you are the one it falls to, and everybody has silently worked that out, and nobody will say anything until the moment arrives.

Here is what I think you are actually dreading, and I do not think it is the doing of it.

It is the four seconds before. Everybody will go slightly quiet. Somebody will find something to look at. And you will stand there, in front of your family, in his position, and the whole room will be thinking the same thing and not one person will say it.

Let me say the first thing. That silence is not inevitable. It is what happens by default, and there is one small thing that changes it entirely, and it costs about two seconds.

And before anything else: if these months have taken you past what a man can hold, 988 is a crisis line and it is answered, and a doctor, a counselor or a pastor you trust is the right place for it. Nothing here stands in for a qualified person.

His days are as grass

There is a verse about how brief a life is that is not, when you read it properly, a dismissal of anything.

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. (Psalm 103:15, King James Version)

As grass. It sounds harsh until you notice the second half of it, which almost nobody quotes: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.

Flourisheth. He did flourish. The verse does not say a man's life is nothing. It says it is brief, and it says in the same breath that it flowered, and both halves are equally reported.

And the psalm around it is one of the most tender in the whole book. It is the one about God knowing our frame, remembering that we are dust, having pity as a father. This is not a cold verse in a cold chapter. It is a father's assessment of something short and something real.

You are standing in what a man did rather than in what he lost, and Scripture gives both halves without ranking them. The Spirit of God is the one who holds the brevity and the flourishing in the same sentence, and it is written into Psalm 103:15 that a man's days are as grass and that he flourisheth.

And the frame around it is knowing and remembering.

You are inside a chapter about being remembered, and the Holy Spirit does not forget what a man did for forty years. The written word puts the brevity in the arms of a father's pity, and the psalm around Psalm 103:15 is about God knowing our frame and remembering that we are dust.

What the silence will do

Now let me be exact about the four seconds, because it is the part you can actually affect.

If nothing is said, here is what happens. You step into his place. The room goes quiet by about two thirds. Somebody starts a conversation deliberately, to cover it, which everybody will hear as covering it.

And the whole family has an unspoken thought together, alone, in the same room.

That is the worst available version, and it is the default, and it will happen unless somebody speaks. And you are the only person in that room who is in a position to.

You have the one thing that changes those seconds, and Psalm 103:15 names both the shortness and the flowering out loud. The Spirit of God is with a man standing in his father's place in front of a silent room, and the written word gives a man's flourishing its own clause rather than leaving it unsaid.

And here is the second thing, which is about you rather than about them.

If nothing is said, you will do that job in a kind of held breath, concentrating hard, getting it right, and afterward you will not be able to remember doing it. Men in that position frequently cannot. The thing gets done and the doing of it is lost, and then there is nothing left of a moment that could have been worth something.

You were never meant to hold your breath through it, and the Holy Spirit is present in a moment a man is fully inside rather than braced through. The written word says so he flourisheth in the plainest terms, and Scripture attaches the flourishing to the man in the same verse as the grass.

Say his name and begin

So here is the assignment, and it is about two seconds long.

Say your father's name out loud before you begin, and then begin.

Not a speech. Not a tribute, which would put the room under pressure and which several people are not able for. Six or seven words, in your ordinary voice, and then straight into it.

Something like: right, this is Dad's job. Or: he did this for forty years. Or just: this was my father's.

You are naming him rather than performing anything, and Scripture puts the flowering into words rather than leaving it implied. The Spirit of God is with a man saying seven words before he picks anything up, and it is written into Psalm 103:15 that a man flourished and that his days were brief and both are said together.

And then begin, immediately, without a pause. The immediacy is the technique. A sentence followed by a pause invites a response and the room does not know what to give. A sentence followed by you getting straight on with it gives the room somewhere to put it.

What that does to the four seconds is complete. The unspoken thing is spoken, briefly, by the right person, and then the job happens. Nobody has to manage a silence, because there is not one.

You are giving that room somewhere to put what it is already thinking, and the Holy Spirit carries a room through a named moment far better than through an unnamed one. The written word never once leaves the flowering unsaid, and Psalm 103:15 puts the brevity and the flourishing side by side in one breath.