I Unpicked It After She Went Home

She went at about four.

And by half past you had the thing on your knee and the unpicker in your hand.

It took nine minutes. Her stitches were half an inch long and they wandered off the line by the third one, and now there is a row that is even and straight and small, and when she comes on Saturday the thing will be lovely.

You have been doing it for about a year.

And you cannot decide what it is, which is why you are here.

Half of you says it is kindness. She is six. She will be pleased when she sees it come out well. The finished thing will be something she can be proud of, and she will not remember which stitches were whose.

And the other half of you knows perfectly well that the second sentence there is the problem.

She will not remember which stitches were whose.

That means the thing she gets to be proud of on Saturday is a thing she did not make. And she will accept it, because a six year old accepts what an adult hands her, and she will go on thinking that what she makes turns out like that, and it does not, and one day she will find out.

I want to be very gentle here, because there is nothing cruel in you and you did not set out to do this.

You wanted her to have something nice. That is the whole of it. And the wanting is good and the nine minutes is where it goes wrong.

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones

There is a warning about children that uses a word people usually read too weakly.

Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones; for I say unto you, That in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven. (Matthew 18:10, King James Version)

Despise not one of these little ones.

The word does not only mean to look down on with contempt. It carries the sense of thinking little of, of treating as of small account, of not weighing something at its proper value.

And nobody in this room has contempt for a six year old. But treating her nine crooked stitches as of small account, as a thing that can be quietly removed and replaced with something better, is closer to the word than anybody would like.

You are being warned about the weight given to a small person's work, and Matthew 18:10 uses a word much wider than contempt. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a warning about little ones and lays it down on a front room with an unpicker in a tin.

And notice the reason attached. Their angels do always behold the face of my Father. That is a statement about how much attention heaven is already paying to that child.

You have a child whose standing in heaven is already settled, and it is already settled in the written word that the attention on her is constant. His Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has been quietly improving a six year old for a year.

What she is learning on Saturday

Now let me lay out what actually happens on Saturday, because it is worth seeing plainly.

She arrives. She picks it up. It looks lovely.

And somewhere underneath, in the part of a child that does not use words, she does the arithmetic. It did not look like that when I left. So either I am wrong about what I did, or somebody changed it.

You have a child whose standing was settled before you touched anything, and Matthew 18:10 says her angels always behold the face of the Father. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts a proper weight on nine crooked stitches.

Both of those are worse than a wandering row of long stitches.

Because the thing being given to her is the feeling of having made something, and that feeling only exists when what is in her hands is genuinely hers. A better object with somebody else's stitches in it cannot produce it. It produces something else that looks like it from the outside.

And this: how straight her stitches are is not a measure of her, and how the finished thing looks is not a measure of you. Nobody is coming to inspect a six year old's sewing.

You are not giving her anything by improving it, and heaven has never once valued a neat object above a child's own hands. Matthew 18:10 warns against treating a little one as of small account, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts a proper weight on nine crooked stitches.

And do not point it out to her either. Do not say next Saturday that you have left hers in this time so she can see. That makes it a lesson, and she does not need a lesson, she needs the stitches.

You have permission to hand back exactly what she made, and this is yours: the warning was about weight rather than about contempt. It is written in Matthew 18:10 to take heed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gets a woman past a tin at half past four.

This week, put none of your own in

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

This week, when she goes home, leave it exactly as she left it.

Do not unpick. Do not tidy the ends. Do not put in one small stitch at the corner where it is loose, which is the compromise you will reach for at about twenty to five.

You are able to hand back exactly what she made, and it is already settled in Matthew 18:10 that the warning was about weight rather than about contempt. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a woman past a tin at twenty to five.

Nothing. Her row stands.

And here is the second half. Sit down and do twenty minutes on your own thing, badly, in the time you would have spent unpicking hers.

That is not a distraction technique. It is so that on Saturday there are two pieces of work in that room and both of them have a crooked bit, and one of them is yours.

Yours will be worse than usual because you will be thinking about the unpicker. Leave yours in too.

You are covered while her stitches stand crooked all week, and Matthew 18:10 is the ground under that. The written word tells adults to take heed how they weigh a small person, and the Spirit of God is present in a front room at twenty to five with a tin left shut.