I Do It Again After He Is In Bed

He goes up at half seven.

By about ten past eight the house is quiet, and you go past the table, and there it is where he left it.

The joint is wrong. Not slightly. It is a quarter of an inch out and it will not hold, and the whole thing will come apart in about four days when he picks it up, and he will be upset and will not know why.

So you take it apart. Carefully, so the pieces are usable. And you redo it, properly, in about eleven minutes, and put it back on the table at the same angle it was at.

And you have told yourself, every single time, that he will never know.

I want to look at that sentence, because I think it is the load bearing one and I think it is not true.

He knows.

Maybe not consciously, and maybe he could not tell you what changed. But a child who made a thing has been holding it for an hour. He knows the weight of it and the feel of the join and which bit was hardest. And in the morning it is different in his hands, and something registers, and what registers is not the joint.

What registers is that it was not right and somebody fixed it while he was asleep.

Now let me say the fair thing, because I am not going to stand here and make a monster out of a father who is trying to save his son a disappointment.

You are doing it out of love. Genuinely. You can see the failure coming in four days and you want to spare him it, and that is a decent instinct and it comes from the same place as everything good you do for him.

But the four day disappointment is smaller than the thing you are teaching him at ten past eight.

Suffer the little children, and forbid them not

There is a scene where the disciples do something entirely reasonable and get a reaction from Jesus that is unusually sharp.

People are bringing children to Him, and the disciples turn them away. They are not being cruel. They are protecting His time, filtering out what is not important, doing the job.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God. (Mark 10:14, King James Version)

Much displeased. That is a strong phrase and it is not used often.

And the correction is not about the children's manners or their readiness. It is about the adults getting between them and Him, out of good motives, in a way that removed something from those children they were entitled to.

You are being spoken to about getting between a child and something, and Mark 10:14 aims itself at well meaning adults rather than at careless ones. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an unusually sharp moment on a road and lays it down on a kitchen at ten past eight in the evening.

And notice what He does not say. He does not say the disciples were wrong about His time being valuable. He says forbid them not, which is a straight instruction about what to stop doing.

You have a plain instruction rather than an argument to win, and it is already settled in the written word that the stopping is the whole of what was asked. His Spirit is the one who says forbid them not in a house where a father is standing over a table.

The four day disappointment is the smaller one

Now let me set the two things side by side, because until they are side by side the choice does not look like a choice.

If you leave it, in four days it comes apart in his hands. He is disappointed. He may be quite upset. And he learns, in his own body, that a joint cut a quarter of an inch out does not hold, which is a thing that cannot be taught any other way.

If you fix it, nothing comes apart. And he learns something else, which is that his work needs an adult to go over it, and that the version of it that survives is not the version he made.

You are not failing him by leaving it wrong, and Mark 10:14 aims its sharpest moment at well meaning adults rather than at careless ones. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a father past a table at ten past eight.

That second lesson is quieter and it lasts a great deal longer than four days.

And this: whether the joint holds is not a measure of the boy, and it is not a measure of you either. A wrong joint at eight years old is the correct output of an eight year old.

You are not failing him by leaving it wrong, and heaven has never once asked a father to make a child's work hold. Mark 10:14 corrects adults who were between children and something good, and the Spirit of God is the one who gets a man past a doorway at ten past eight.

And here is the harder half. If it comes apart and he is upset, do not fix it then either. Sit with him while he is upset and let it be his to decide what to do about.

You have permission to let it fail, and this is yours: the instruction was to stop rather than to improve anything. It is written in Mark 10:14 to forbid them not, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain instruction plain.

Twenty minutes, and do not touch it

So here is the ask, and it is a thing you will do by not doing something.

Tonight, when he is in bed, walk past the table and leave it.

Do not straighten it. Do not take it apart. Do not do the small quick thing that would take four minutes and that he would never notice. Nothing.

You are forbidding nothing tonight, and Mark 10:14 gives that instruction to well meaning adults rather than to careless ones. The Holy Spirit is the one who gets a father past a table he could put right in four minutes.

And here is the second half. Sit down at that table and make something of your own for twenty minutes, badly, beside his.

That is deliberate. It puts your hands somewhere and it puts a second imperfect object next to his, so that in the morning there are two things on that table that are not right, and one of them is yours.

Yours will be worse than usual because you will be doing it with the joint sitting there in the corner of your eye. Leave yours wrong too, and leave it out.

You are covered while a wrong joint stands overnight, and Mark 10:14 is the ground under that. The written word gives a plain instruction to well meaning adults to stop, and the Spirit of God is present at a kitchen table where a man is making something badly beside a child's work.