She Asked Me At The Table

Your sister asked what you paid.

Not unkindly. Not as a test. She asked in the same voice she uses about a holiday or a car, which is the voice of somebody making conversation at a table where everybody has just eaten.

And you did the thing.

The thing has several forms and you used one of them. It was something like: oh, not much, we just got whatever was there. Then a small movement to somebody else's plate. Then a question of your own aimed at a different person, which worked, because it always works.

And you have thought about it since Sunday.

Because in the two seconds before you answered, something got calculated. Not the number. A ranking. There was a table with eight people at it, and somewhere in your head those eight people were briefly arranged in an order, and you were reading off your own position.

And here is the thing that is worth saying plainly: nobody else at that table was doing any arranging at all.

You are a man who answered a question about money and not a man who was found out, and a price said at a family table has never once been a ranking of the people sitting at it.

The rich and poor meet together

There is a proverb about money that says almost nothing about money.

The rich and poor meet together: the LORD is the maker of them all. (Proverbs 22:2, King James Version)

They meet together. That is the picture: two kinds of people in one room, at one table, in the ordinary run of life. It is stated as a fact about how the world is arranged rather than as a problem to be solved.

And then the second half, which is the whole argument: the LORD is the maker of them all.

One maker. Same workmanship. The verse takes the ranking that everybody carries around and puts a single fact underneath it that the ranking cannot survive.

You are sitting at a table where one maker made everybody, and a difference in what people can spend has never once produced a difference in what they are. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man replaying two seconds at a family dinner, and Proverbs 22:2 puts the same maker under both.

Now notice what the proverb does not do, because it is what makes it useful rather than sentimental.

It does not say the difference is imaginary. It does not say nobody has more and nobody has less. The rich and the poor are named as real categories in the first half of the sentence.

What it denies is that the difference goes all the way down. It stops the difference at the level of circumstance and refuses to let it reach the level of the person.

You are different from the people at that table in what you had this month and in nothing beneath that, and a gap in circumstances has never once been permitted by that verse to become a gap in worth. The written word names the difference and then puts one maker under all of it, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds that line at a Sunday dinner.

And there is something in the word meet that is easy to walk past.

Meet together is what the verse says happens, and it is stated as normal. A mixed table is the ordinary condition of a family and of a church and of a street, and the proverb takes it entirely for granted.

You are in the ordinary arrangement rather than an awkward one, and a table with different amounts of money around it has never once been a table that required managing. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the awkwardness out of an ordinary Sunday, and Proverbs 22:2 assumes the mixed room without one word of discomfort.

What the deflection actually does

Something practical, and it is about the cost of the move you made.

The deflection worked. Nobody noticed. The conversation moved to your brother in law and stayed there and nothing happened.

But look at what it did on the inside. A plain answer would have taken two seconds and been over. The deflection took two seconds and then continued, because it confirmed that the number was something to be handled rather than something to be said.

That confirmation is the expensive part. It is a vote, cast quietly, in favor of the ranking you were afraid of.

You have been voting for a ranking that nobody else at that table was using, and a deflection performed smoothly has never once been cheaper than a plain answer. The written word refuses to let a difference in money reach the person, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a man what a two second move actually cost him.

Now the second practical thing, and it is easier than it looks.

The answer is the number and nothing else. Said in the same voice used for the weather. We got the cheapest one, it was this much, it does the job.

Three short clauses, with the third one being a fact about the machine, which moves the conversation off the money without anybody noticing that it moved.

You are able to say a number in an ordinary voice and let it be ordinary, and a figure spoken without any weight on it has never once landed on a table with any weight. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man say a number the way he would say a date, and Proverbs 22:2 flattens the ranking by naming one maker.

And then pass the salt, or ask somebody about their week, or get up and put the kettle on. Not as a deflection. As what a person does at a table after any other ordinary sentence.