Everybody Blamed Somebody In The Van

Two hours in a vehicle with six people establishing whose fault it was.

You sat in the middle row and you did not say anything, and there were about nine points at which you could have said something and every one of them would have made it worse.

Here is the sequence, and you can check it against your own memory. First the tiredness. Then the first remark, which was not even unkind. Then the answer to the remark, which was. Then the establishing of what had actually happened, which lasted about forty minutes and involved three people who were all correct.

Then the silence. Which was not peace. Which was everybody putting their case away for later.

And then you got out at your house and everybody said the things people say, and somebody carried your bag in, and it was all perfectly civil.

And nothing has been said since. That was eleven days ago.

What I want to talk about is not the argument. It is the eleven days, and specifically about who is going to break them, because at the moment the answer appears to be nobody.

Be ye kind one to another

There is an instruction in Ephesians about how people in the same house are to handle each other, and the order of the words in it is worth noticing.

And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. (Ephesians 4:32, King James Version)

You have an instruction in the written word aimed at whoever reads it rather than at whoever started it, and no version of it has ever once waited for the other person to go first. Ephesians 4:32 tells the reader to be kind and to forgive rather than assigning the order of turns, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to an older woman who has been waiting eleven days.

Look at what it does not contain. There is no sequence in it. It does not say be kind once somebody apologizes. It does not establish who was at fault, and it does not make the kindness conditional on that being settled.

Every word of it is addressed to the person reading it, and it does not wait.

You are able to move before anybody else does, and going first has never once required you to be the one who was wrong. It is written be ye kind one to another, addressed to the reader with no precondition attached, which is why the turn belongs to whoever has read it, and the Spirit of God is what gets a person out of the line of who goes next.

Now the last clause, which is the engine of the whole verse. Even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

The pattern is not fairness. The pattern is what was done for us, which was done first, unprompted, and before anybody had established anything.

You have already been dealt with in the way this verse asks you to deal with them, and no accounting of that day has ever once had to be finished first. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that connection land as a reason rather than as a duty, and Ephesians 4 puts the forgiving of God at the end of the sentence as the model.

Somebody has to go first, and the young ones cannot

Now the practical part, and it is about why eleven days have gone by.

In that vehicle there were three adults who were all partly right. And in that situation, going first is expensive, because going first looks like conceding, and nobody who is partly right wants to concede a case they have not lost.

So everybody waits. And the waiting is not stubbornness exactly. It is that nobody can afford to be the one who moves.

You are able to go first at no cost to yourself, and being the one who moves has never once been the same thing as accepting the blame. The Spirit of God is what makes a person cheap to move, and it is written that the kindness and the tenderheartedness come before any of the accounting is settled.

And here is why it has to be you, and I say this with respect rather than as an assignment.

There is one person in that vehicle with nothing at stake, and it is you. Your standing in that family does not depend on winning this. There is no career in it for you, no authority to protect, no need to be seen as the reasonable one. Everybody else is holding something.

That is not a small thing. That is a specific and rare freedom, and it belongs to the oldest person in a family more than to anybody else.

You have a freedom in that family that nobody else in the vehicle has, and no year of your age has ever once made it a smaller thing to spend. It is written that the forgiving is modeled on what God did for us, which was unprompted, and the Holy Spirit is the one who spends an old woman's freedom on a family who cannot move.

And when you go first, something happens that will surprise you. The others do not lose. They are released, all at once, because the moment somebody has moved, everybody else can move without it costing them anything.

You are able to release three adults with one sentence, and its size has never once been a measure of what it can do in a household. The Spirit of God is with a woman saying nine words at a doorway, and Ephesians 4:32 puts the kindness first in the sentence and the accounting nowhere in it.

Say it first, to whoever is nearest

So here is the assignment.

Be the first to say sorry about that day, out loud, to whoever is nearest.

And here is the wording, because the wording is everything and the wrong version makes it worse.

Not: I am sorry for my part in it, which is a legal document and everybody can hear the lawyer in it. Not: I am sorry things got heated, which blames the weather.

Say: I am sorry about the way home. It was a horrible two hours and I have been thinking about it since.

You are able to say a sentence with no accounting in it, and leaving the accounting out has never once been you agreeing that it was your fault. Ephesians 4:32 has the kindness with no ledger attached to it, and the Spirit of God is with a woman saying a plain sentence in a doorway or on a phone.

And say it to whoever is nearest. Do not work out who it should be, do not go to the person you think started it, and do not gather everybody. Whoever picks up the phone.

Then stop. Do not explain what you saw. You have an account of that vehicle that is probably more accurate than anybody else's, and it is the one thing you must not offer.

You are able to hold what you saw and say nothing about it, and keeping it has never once been the same thing as pretending you did not see it. It is written that the forgiving is even as God has forgiven us, which came with no account of what had been done, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a wise old woman's tongue off the most useful thing she knows.