I Got It Wrong Out Loud

It was a small one.

That is the part that is hard to explain to anybody. It was not a large humiliating error. It was an ordinary wrong thing, said confidently, in a kitchen, in front of one child.

And your entire body wanted to leave the room.

Not walk out dramatically. Just find something urgent in another part of the house. Remember the washing. Check something. Anything, as long as it involved standing up.

And most of us do it. And then the mistake has an exit attached to it, and the exit is a great deal louder than the mistake was.

And the worst of it is how small the whole event was. Nobody laughed. Nobody said anything unkind. It lasted about four seconds and then the evening carried on, and by the following morning it would have been completely forgotten by the only other person in the room, if you had let it be.

This treasure in earthen vessels

There is a line in Corinthians about containers that is one of the most practical sentences in the whole book.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us. (2 Corinthians 4:7, King James Version)

Earthen vessels. Clay pots. Cheap, breakable, ordinary, and absolutely not the container anybody would choose for something valuable.

And then the reason, which is the part that changes everything: that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.

The ordinariness of the container is not a regrettable limitation. It is the design. If the pot were impressive, people would look at the pot.

You are the container rather than the treasure, and no container anywhere has ever once been required to be impressive. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief at a kitchen table rather than a theological idea, and 2 Corinthians 4:7 makes the plainness of the vessel the whole point.

And notice what it does not say. It does not say the vessel should try to appear less earthen. That would defeat the entire mechanism described in the second half of the verse.

You were never supposed to look like more than you are, and nobody has ever once been asked to conceal the material they are made of. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the shame out of being seen to be ordinary, and the written word names the clay openly and gives the reason for it.

What the exit teaches

Let me be precise about what happens in that minute, because the mistake is not the event. The exit is.

A child sees an adult say something wrong. That is one piece of information, and on its own it is a small and useful one.

Then the child sees the adult leave the room. That is the second piece, and it is much larger, and it says: that was intolerable.

So the lesson is not that grown men get things wrong. The lesson is that getting something wrong is a thing you have to escape from.

You have been teaching the exit rather than the error, and no child has ever once learned more from a mistake than from what happened in the thirty seconds after it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man which half of the moment was actually the lesson, and 2 Corinthians 4:7 puts the value in the contents and not in the pot.

And there is something else, which is worth saying because it is the actual mercy here.

Your child is getting things wrong all day. That is what school is. And the only adults he ever sees do it are adults who then leave.

So he has no model at all for the ordinary experience of being wrong and staying put, which is a thing he will need approximately every day for the rest of his life.

You have the missing demonstration in your own body tonight, and it has never once required you to say a single word. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies what a minute of staying actually costs, and the written word makes the ordinariness of the vessel deliberate.

You were never diminished by the mistake itself, and no clay pot anywhere has ever once been valued for being seamless. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a small error from being treated as an exposure, and 2 Corinthians 4:7 grounds the excellency in the power rather than in the container.

One minute, and do not fill it

So here is the assignment, and it is sixty seconds long and it is harder than most things this site has asked for.

Tonight, if you get something wrong, stay in the kitchen for a full minute.

And do not fill the minute.

Do not make a joke. Do not explain when you last did this at school. Do not start tidying something. Do not pick up a cup that does not need picking up.

Just stay, and carry on with the next question.

You have sixty seconds to give tonight that cost nothing and teach everything, and no minute has ever once been longer than the hallway a man escapes into. The Spirit of God is the one who is in a kitchen with somebody who did not stand up, and 2 Corinthians 4:7 puts the excellency outside the vessel entirely.

The filling is the same act as the leaving, done sitting down. It is all an attempt to put something over the top of the moment, and a child can read every version of it.

If you want to say one thing, say four words: that one was wrong. And then go on.

2 Corinthians 4:7 puts the treasure in a plain container on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a kitchen with a man who has not stood up.

You are permitted to stay in a room after being wrong in it, and staying has never once been a smaller act than fixing. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in sixty seconds nobody filled, and the written word makes the ordinary vessel deliberate rather than unfortunate.

You have a whole demonstration available tonight, and it has never once needed you to get anything right first. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes one unremarkable minute the largest thing in that room, and 2 Corinthians 4:7 grounds the excellency outside the container entirely.