I Was The One Who Used It Last

You have gone through it about forty times now.

Tuesday evening. The load that was too big, possibly. The thing you put in that maybe should not have gone in. The noise it made about two thirds of the way through, which at the time registered as nothing and has since become the center of the whole account.

And the question underneath all forty replays is always the same question: was that me.

Here is what I want to say before anything else, and I want to say it plainly rather than kindly, because plainly is what actually helps here.

Forty replays have produced no new information.

Not one. Every single pass through Tuesday evening has used exactly the same footage, and the footage is not getting clearer, and it will not get clearer on the forty first pass either. What is happening is not investigation. It is a loop, and loops feel like work while producing nothing.

And there is a second thing going on that is bigger than Tuesday.

Because the real question being asked, over and over, is not about a washing machine. It is: am I the kind of man who breaks things that a family depends on.

You are a man who used a machine on a Tuesday and not a man who broke a household, and the last pair of hands on a thing has never once been the cause of it wearing out.

He knoweth our frame

There is a verse that says something about God's knowledge of people that is not about His knowledge of their sins.

Like as a father pitieth his children, so the LORD pitieth them that fear him. For he knoweth our frame; he remembereth that we are dust. (Psalm 103:14, King James Version)

He knoweth our frame. Frame is the build of a thing. The materials, the tolerances, what it can bear and where it gives. He knows the construction, and the psalm says He factors it in rather than being disappointed by it.

You are known as a built thing with limits rather than judged as a machine that failed, and the frame of a man has never once been a fault that God had to overlook in order to be kind. Psalm 103:14 says He knoweth our frame and puts it as the reason for the pity rather than the obstacle to it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody going through Tuesday for the fortieth time.

And then: he remembereth that we are dust.

Remembers. As in holds it in mind continuously. Not discovers with dismay, not is reminded of with a sigh. He carries the knowledge of what we are made of as a standing fact, and everything He does with us is done in the light of it.

You are being dealt with by somebody who already knows exactly what you are made of, and a limit in a man has never once been news to the God the psalm describes. The written word says He remembereth rather than He forgives, which is a different and larger thing, and the Spirit of God is the one who applies that to a man at a kitchen table at midnight.

Now turn that on Tuesday evening.

Suppose the load was a bit big. Suppose the thing that went in should not have. That is a man with a frame, at the end of a working day, doing an ordinary household job in the ordinary way, without a clipboard.

And a God who knoweth our frame is not standing at the end of that evening with a note.

You were doing a household job like a person and not operating machinery like a technician, and an ordinary act done by a tired man has never once been the crime the loop keeps prosecuting. Psalm 103:14 sets the pity of a father beside the knowledge of the frame, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a trial that has been running since Tuesday.

Machines end, and the last hand is not the cause

Now the practical half, and it is a fact about how things wear out that has quietly gone missing from the account.

A machine with a motor and a pump and a bearing in it has a length of service in it. Every use spends a small amount of that length. The wear is distributed across every load it ever did, over years, by everybody in the house, including the loads nobody remembers.

And then one day the remaining length runs out. It has to run out during some load. And whoever put that load in is the person standing there when the total arrives.

You are the person who was standing there and not the person who caused it, and the last load has never once been more responsible than the four thousand loads before it. The written word deals with people according to their frame rather than their proximity to a failure, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates the two at a kitchen table.

There is a thing the mind does here that is worth naming, because naming it takes some of its power away.

It is the same thing that happens when a person is the last one to hold a glass that breaks. Everyone in the room looks at the last pair of hands, and the person holding them feels guilty, and none of that has anything to do with why the glass was weak.

Proximity is not causation. It just feels exactly like it from the inside.

You have been confusing being present with being at fault, and standing nearest to a thing when it ended has never once been the same as ending it. Psalm 103:14 measures a man by his frame and not by where he happened to be standing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference in a house where nobody else is asking.

And there is the other half of this, and it is about what the replaying is costing.

Every hour in that loop is an hour not spent on the actual decision, and the actual decision is small and dull and takes a phone call. The loop is not preparation for the decision. It is a substitute for it, and it is a more painful one.