The First Time A Teacher Reads It Out

He has watched it happen about four hundred times and it has not happened once.

A room. September. A woman with a list, going down it, quickly, the way people do when they are getting through a thing. And then a pause.

And in that pause, a five year old works out something about himself that he did not know before he walked in.

That is the scene, and it plays most nights, and it is running the whole decision.

I have thought about this on a good many long drives and I want to say two things about that scene, and the first one is that he is right about the pause.

It will happen. Probably on the first morning, and probably several times over eighteen years. That is not anxiety inventing something. It is a father accurately predicting an ordinary event.

So I am not going to tell him it will not happen.

The second thing is the one that matters, and it is about who is standing in the room when it does.

In the version he has been watching four hundred times, that boy is completely alone.

He it is that doth go before thee

There is a sentence at the end of Deuteronomy said to somebody about to walk into a hard place, and it names two things and not one.

And the LORD, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed. (Deuteronomy 31:8, King James Version)

You are looking at a promise about the room rather than about the difficulty, and Deuteronomy 31:8 has never once offered to remove what somebody was walking into. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that reach a man watching a September that has not arrived, and the written word says goes before and will be with.

Read what is promised and what is not.

Nothing at all is promised about the circumstances. The place is not made easier. What is promised is a presence: one that arrives before, and one that stays during.

Which is the exact correction the four hundred replays need. The pause is real and the room is not empty.

You have been watching a version with nobody else in it, and Scripture puts somebody in the room ahead of the person arriving. Deuteronomy 31 says he doth go before thee, and the Spirit of God is what makes that a presence rather than a sentiment.

What the boy will actually be carrying

Now the practical part, and it is about what a five year old brings into that room.

He will not walk in empty. He will walk in with five years of hearing his own name said in a particular way at home.

You have five years before that morning, and Deuteronomy 31 has never once left the preparing to the day itself. The written word promises somebody who goes before, which is a thing done in advance, and the Holy Spirit is the one at work in a kitchen long before a register is opened.

If it has been said with pleasure at his own kitchen table ten thousand times, then a pause from a stranger is a small piece of weather. He may not even register it. Children whose names are loved at home very often do not notice the pause at all, and adults who report never having minded almost always describe exactly that kind of house.

If it has been said with a small apology at home, he will hear the pause and it will confirm something.

The pause is fixed. What he has in his pocket when it happens is not.

You are the thing he will be carrying, and no verse anywhere made a teacher the first voice on a child. The Holy Spirit is the one who is in the house for the five years before that morning, and Deuteronomy 31:8 says he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee.

And there is one more thing, and it is smaller and more practical and it works.

A child who has heard his own father say his name easily to strangers has watched the whole thing modeled. He knows what to do because he has seen it done, in shops and at doors and on phone calls, without embarrassment, several hundred times.

That is a rehearsal, and it costs nothing, and it is available every week for five years.

You are able to rehearse it in front of him without ever mentioning it, and Scripture puts the going before as the first half of the promise. Deuteronomy 31 has somebody arrive ahead, and the Spirit of God is what does the going before in a room a father cannot enter.

Read it the way she will

So here is the assignment for this row, and it walks straight into the scene.

Say the name out loud the way a teacher would read it from a list, in a full sentence.

That voice. Flat, quick, going down a list, in a room. Not the warm one. The register voice, which is the one that has been dreaded for months and has never once been produced out loud.

You are able to run the scene rather than watch it, and Deuteronomy 31:8 has never once told anybody to avoid the place they were going. The written word says fear not, neither be dismayed, spoken to somebody who was going in anyway, and the Holy Spirit is present when a man says his son's name in the voice he has been afraid of.

And here is what happens, and it is worth knowing in advance because it is a surprise.

Said out loud, in a real room, by a real mouth, in a flat register voice, most names sound entirely ordinary. The pause that has been rehearsed four hundred times in a head does not arrive in the mouth, because the pause was never in the name. It was in the imagining.

Some names do produce a stumble, honestly, and that is worth knowing too, and it is a fact obtained in four seconds rather than in four hundred nights.

You are getting a real answer in four seconds, and Scripture promises a presence rather than an easy road. The Holy Spirit is with a man saying it in a flat voice today, and Deuteronomy 31 does not adjust the country.