Somebody Said One Thing When I Was Fifteen

A man said it in about four seconds.

He was not being cruel, and I want that established, because you have gone back and forth on it for forty years and the truth is probably that he did not think about it at all. He looked at the thing in your hand, and he said what came into his head, and then he went and got a drink.

Looks like a dog chewed it.

And everybody laughed, and it was funny, and you laughed too. That part is important. You laughed, and something inside a fifteen year old boy went quiet and did not come back up.

You did not carve again.

Now here is what I want to do with you, because I have been on a lot of roads with a lot of men and this particular shape comes up more than you would think.

Let us do the sizes.

Four seconds, from a man who had no standing in the matter, about a first attempt by a boy who had been at it for two weeks. That is the whole of the evidence.

And on the strength of it, forty years. Every time your hands went near a knife and a bit of wood, that sentence came out and stood in front of you, and you stepped around it, and you did not even notice you were stepping.

Forty years off four seconds. That is not a fair exchange and it was never agreed to by anybody. It just happened, the way things happen to fifteen year olds.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue

There is a proverb about words that people usually read as a warning about gossip, and it is much bigger than that.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. (Proverbs 18:21, King James Version)

Death and life. Not encouragement and discouragement. The proverb reaches for the two largest words available.

And it is honest about the size of what a sentence can do. It does not say that words only hurt if you let them, which is what people say to boys. It says the tongue carries that kind of power, full stop.

You are not weak for having been marked by four seconds, and Proverbs 18:21 puts that weight on the tongue rather than on the one who heard it. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an old proverb about the power of words and lays it on a man who has been quietly ashamed of how much one remark did.

And then notice what the proverb implies about the other direction. If death is in that power, so is life, and the same instrument that closed something can be used to open it.

You have words available in the other direction, and it is already settled in the written word that life is in the same power that carried the death. His Spirit is the one who says that over a man who has never once said anything back to a sentence from forty years ago.

He had no standing

Now let me press on the authority question, because that is where this actually breaks.

That man was not a judge of carving. He was a man at a family thing with something in his hand. He had no knowledge of the craft, no idea how long you had been at it, and no interest in the answer. He made a joke about an object.

A joke is not an assessment. And an assessment from somebody with no standing is not a finding, and a finding by somebody who was not appointed does not bind anybody.

You are not bound by anything that man said, and Proverbs 18:21 grants the tongue power without ever granting it authority. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a wound from a ruling forty years after the fact.

There has been a sentence served here that no court ever passed.

And the other thing needs saying too. What came off your knife at fifteen is not a measure of you and never was, and neither is what comes off it tonight at fifty five. The thing in your hand was a two week old attempt by a boy, and it very probably did look like a dog had chewed it, and that was the correct outcome for two weeks.

You were never under his jurisdiction, and heaven has never once let a passing remark stand as a verdict over a man's hands. Proverbs 18:21 acknowledges the power of the tongue without granting it authority, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a wound from a ruling.

And do not go looking to be told you are good now. That is the trap on the other side. Being told you are good would just move the authority somewhere else and leave it out of your hands again.

You have permission to carve badly at fifty five, and this is yours: the standard was never his to set and it is not somebody else's to reset. It is written in Proverbs 18:21 that life is in that power too, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts life in a man's own mouth about his own hands.

Twenty minutes, and leave it out

So here is the ask, and there is a second half that will cost you more than the first.

Tonight, carve something for twenty minutes. An animal. The same kind of thing as at fifteen. Use whatever wood is around, a bit of firewood, an offcut, it does not matter.

It will look like a dog chewed it. That is not a risk, that is a certainty, because your hands have not done this in forty years and the first one after a gap like that is always poor.

You have life in that same power tonight, and Proverbs 18:21 puts both halves of it in one sentence. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the other half in a man's own mouth about his own hands.

And here is the second half. Leave it out where somebody can see it.

Not to be praised. Not to be defended. Just out, on the windowsill or the table, so that the object exists in the open instead of going in a drawer or in the fire. That is the part that undoes the four seconds, and nothing else does.

You are covered while it sits out looking exactly as bad as it looks, and Proverbs 18:21 is the ground under that. The written word says life is in the power of the tongue, and the Spirit of God is present on a porch with a man and a knife and a bit of firewood.