It Was Never Like This At Home

Nothing in your father's house was ever broken.

That is the sentence, and you have never said it out loud, and it has been running quietly for about two years, and it arrives most reliably when something in this house stops working.

And it arrived again on Sunday, in a kitchen, in front of a machine, and it had the usual second half attached to it, which is: so what is wrong with me.

Now before anything else, the accuracy of that sentence is worth checking, and this article is going to check it.

Because the house you are comparing this one to is a house you lived in between the ages of about four and about seventeen. And a child in a house does not see the arrangements. A child sees that the light comes on.

You are a man keeping a household in a hard year and not a man falling short of his father, and a comparison with a remembered house has never once been a comparison anybody could win.

Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better

There is a question in Ecclesiastes that people find abrupt, and it is one of the most practical sentences in the book.

Say not thou, What is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this. (Ecclesiastes 7:10, King James Version)

Thou dost not enquire wisely concerning this.

Notice what he does not say. He does not say the former days were worse. He does not defend the present or attack the past.

He says the question itself is badly formed. It is not a disloyal question or an ungrateful one. It is an unwise one, which is a technical objection rather than a moral one.

You are asking a question that Scripture calls badly built rather than wrong, and a man comparing two houses has never once been a man doing something disloyal. Ecclesiastes 7:10 objects to the form of the question rather than to the person asking it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing in a kitchen on a Sunday.

And why is it badly built? Because the two things being compared are not the same kind of object.

The present is being experienced from inside, with all of its unresolved parts visible at once. The former days are being remembered, which means they have been edited by time and by the age of the person who was in them.

That is not nostalgia in the sentimental sense. It is a fact about how memory works, and it makes the comparison structurally unfair before anybody starts.

You are comparing something lived against something remembered, and a house seen from inside a hard year has never once been comparable to one seen from a child's height. The written word calls the enquiry unwise on the grounds of its construction, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a man what is actually being weighed.

And there is a kindness in the phrasing that is easy to miss.

Say not thou. It is an instruction to stop asking rather than an answer to the question, and stopping is offered as the relief. He is not going to settle the comparison. He is going to take it off the table.

You are being offered the removal of a question rather than an answer to it, and a comparison taken off the table has never once needed to be won first. Ecclesiastes 7:10 ends the enquiry rather than resolving it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a two year old question out of a man's kitchen.

What a child does not see

Something practical, and it is about evidence.

A boy is between four and seventeen in a house like that. During those years his father is in his thirties and forties and is handling things, and none of the handling is visible from four feet up.

You did not see the month the boiler went. You did not see what got moved to pay for it, or the conversation at the table after everybody was in bed, or the six weeks when something was broken and got worked around quietly so that no child in that house ever knew.

A child sees that the light comes on. A child does not see the arrangements that keep it coming on.

You have been comparing this house against the arrangements you could not see, and a house that looked seamless to a boy has never once been a house without a hard year in it. The written word calls the comparison unwise before anybody starts, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a man what he was not standing high enough to see.

Now the practical thing, and it is a piece of evidence rather than an argument.

Say one true thing out loud tonight about the house you grew up in that was not perfect.

There will be one. There is always one, and it has been quietly excluded from the version that runs in your head. The car that never started in winter. The room nobody went into. The thing your mother said about the roof.

Say it out loud, to whoever is there, as an ordinary remark.

You have a real memory available that the running version leaves out, and one true fact about a childhood house has never once been disloyal to the man who kept it. Ecclesiastes 7:10 objects to the form of the comparison, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man says an accurate thing out loud about his own father's house.

And what happens when it is said is that the version in a man mind loses its seamlessness, which is the only thing it had.

You have one machine in front of you and not a verdict from another decade, and a thing that stopped working this week has never once been a message from a house in another town. Ecclesiastes 7:10 takes the comparison off the table, and the Holy Spirit is the one in the kitchen with a man and a machine.