I Said Let Me Just And Took The Brush

It takes two seconds. That is what makes it so hard to catch.

Let me just.

And your hand goes out, and the brush comes across, and you do the one stroke that fixes the thing, and you put it back into his hand.

Two seconds. Nobody would say anything. If a visitor was in the room they would not even register that it had happened.

But watch what you give back.

You take a brush out of a hand that wants it. And you put a brush back into a hand that has gone slightly still. Something changed in those two seconds that has nothing to do with the stroke.

He carries on. He always carries on. But the thing that was in him before, the momentum of somebody in the middle of something, has been interrupted, and it takes a while to come back and sometimes it does not come back at all that afternoon.

And you do it, I would guess, four or five times an hour.

I want to say the fair thing here. Every one of those was a correction that improved the picture. You were not being controlling. Something was going wrong and you had a hand free and it took two seconds.

That is exactly why it has gone on for years. Nothing about it is big enough to notice.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words

There is a proverb about restraint that is not about staying silent, and the word in it is the useful one.

He that hath knowledge spareth his words: and a man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. (Proverbs 17:27, King James Version)

Spareth his words.

Spare is a word about holding back something already in hand. It assumes the thing is there. He is not describing a man with nothing to say, he is describing a man who has something and does not spend it.

And the proverb attaches that to knowledge rather than to ignorance. Knowing more is what makes the sparing possible.

You are being described as somebody with something to spare, and Proverbs 17:27 attaches the restraint to knowledge rather than to having nothing. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a proverb about a man's mouth and lays it down on a kitchen table with two brushes on it.

And notice the second half. A man of understanding is of an excellent spirit. The restraint is not presented as a loss. It is presented as a quality.

You have a restraint that Scripture calls excellent rather than absent, and it is already settled in the written word that holding back what you have is the strong position. His Spirit is the one who says spareth his words over somebody whose hand is faster than their decision.

The correction was real and the cost was real

Now let me hold two things together, because both are true and only one of them ever gets counted.

The stroke was better. Genuinely. Thirty years of practice sit behind that hand and none of it sits behind his, and the thing done in two seconds was correct, and the picture is better for it.

And the momentum you interrupted was worth more than the stroke.

You have a restraint that Scripture calls an excellent spirit, and Proverbs 17:27 attaches it to knowing more rather than to knowing less. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes holding back a strength rather than an absence.

Because he is not making a good picture. Nobody in that room needs a good picture. He is finding out what a brush does when he pushes it, and every interruption takes him out of the finding out and puts him back in a room with an adult who knows more.

And this: how his picture turns out is not a measure of him, and it is not a measure of you either. It is going in a drawer within two weeks and everybody knows it.

You are not required to improve anything, and heaven has never once weighed a child's picture above a child's absorption in it. Proverbs 17:27 calls the sparing of what you have an excellent spirit, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes holding back a strength rather than a silence.

And do not replace it with instruction either. Do not stop taking the brush and start saying it instead. That is the same interruption arriving through a different door.

You have permission to let a wrong stroke stand, and this is yours: the sparing was named as understanding and not as neglect. It is written in Proverbs 17:27 that he that hath knowledge spareth his words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a hand still for two seconds.

Twenty minutes, and the sentence stays in

So here is the ask.

This week, sit with him for twenty minutes with paint or whatever it is, and do not say let me just.

Not once. And do not do the silent version, which is the hand going out without the sentence, and which is the harder half.

It will arrive four or five times. It will arrive with the hand already moving, because the hand has been doing this for years and does not wait for permission. Put your hand back on your own paper.

You are able to keep a hand on your own paper, and it is already settled in Proverbs 17:27 that the sparing assumes there was something worth spending. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a fast hand still for two seconds.

And have your own paper. That is not optional. Paint your own picture badly beside his, so that your hands have somewhere to be, because a hand with nothing to do is a hand that goes across the table.

Yours will be poor. Twenty minutes of not intervening is genuinely tiring and it will show in what you make. Leave yours as it is and do not tidy it.

You are covered while a stroke goes wrong two feet from your hand, and Proverbs 17:27 is the ground under that. The written word calls the sparing of what a person has an excellent spirit, and the Spirit of God is present at a kitchen table where somebody is keeping their hand on their own side.