Two Endings In The Same Week

Four people have made the joke.

End of an era, one of them said, twice, on different days. Another one said the house knew. Somebody at the gathering on Friday said something about the pair of you going out together, and everybody laughed, including you.

And each one of them is being kind and each one of them is reaching for something to say, and the reaching is what produces the joke, and the joke is harmless.

And after the fourth one it stopped being harmless.

Because a joke said four times is not a joke anymore. It is an idea being handed to a man repeatedly, and the idea has a shape, and the shape is: this means something about you.

And you have been polite about it and you have laughed at all four and you have not said the thing you actually think, which is that a motor wore out in the same week that a contract ended, and those two facts have nothing whatever to do with each other.

You are a man with two things ending in one week and not a man being told something, and two endings that landed together have never once been a sentence about the person they landed on.

To every thing there is a season

There is a famous opening line in Ecclesiastes, and what it describes is an arrangement rather than a message.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version)

To every thing there is a season.

Every thing. Things have seasons. Plants have them, animals have them, work has them, and manufactured objects wear out after a certain number of hours of use, which is their season in the only sense that word can mean for a motor.

And the verse states that as a fact about how the world is arranged. It does not say the seasons of two different things are coordinated with each other in order to say something to a person.

You are living in a world where things have their own seasons independently, and two things ending in one week have never once been two things speaking to each other. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who has laughed politely four times, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 describes an arrangement rather than a message.

And notice how calm the whole chapter is.

It lists twenty eight of them. A time to be born, a time to die, a time to plant, a time to pluck up. It reads like an inventory, and there is no drama anywhere in it and nothing in it is addressed to anybody personally.

The passage is not about what your life is telling you. It is about how time is organized.

You have in front of you a description of how time works and not a message addressed to you, and a chapter that lists twenty eight seasons has never once been a chapter about one man's week. The written word catalogues rather than interprets, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a description from being turned into a personal communication.

And there is one more thing, which is the phrase to every purpose.

Every purpose has a time. Which means the purposes are multiple and separate. There is not one purpose being worked out through everything simultaneously. There are many, and each has its own timing, and they overlap because there are a great many of them.

You are watching two separate purposes overlap and not one meaning arrive twice, and two things happening in one week have never once been the same thing happening. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets two things be two things, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 makes the purposes plural and separately timed.

What the joke is actually for

Something practical, and it is worth being fair to the four people.

Nobody is trying to tell you anything. Coincidences make people uncomfortable, and the discomfort wants resolving, and the fastest way to resolve it is to make it mean something and say the meaning out loud as a joke.

That is not an attack. It is what people do with an odd fact standing in a room. They tidy it.

You are watching people tidy something rather than deliver a verdict, and four kind remarks about timing have never once been four people telling a man what his life means. The written word describes the seasons without interpreting them, and the Spirit of God is the one who reads a well meant joke correctly.

Now the practical thing, and it is one sentence said once, lightly.

Say: it is a coincidence. The machine was fifteen years old.

Light. Not correcting anybody, not making it into a subject. One sentence, said once, in the same tone as the joke it answers.

You have one light sentence available that closes this without a conversation, and a plain fact said once has never once needed to be said a second time. The Holy Spirit is the one in the room while a man says the ordinary thing, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 states the arrangement plainly and moves on.

And then let people say whatever they say, because they will go on saying it for a bit and then they will stop, the way people do with any new fact about somebody.

The saying is not the problem. The problem was only ever what got taken in from it, and one plain sentence said out loud puts a man his own account on the record beside theirs.

You have your own account to put on the record beside theirs, and a man who says the plain thing once has never once needed anybody to agree with him for it to stand. The Holy Spirit is the one present while a light sentence gets said, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 states the arrangement and moves on.