He Has Never Heard Me Say Anything

Nine years, and he has never heard you say anything.

Not nothing at all. He has heard you say hello and thank you and the name of his grandson, and he has heard you laugh at the right places in stories you did not follow.

He has never heard a sentence.

And what that means, if you sit with it, is that a man who has had you at his table for nine years does not know what you sound like when you are explaining something, or when you are unsure, or when you are being funny. He has never heard you being any of the things you actually are.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You have been sitting at that table as a shape rather than a person, and nine years is long enough for that to have settled into what he thinks you are.

So I am not going to tell you he knows you through your wife. He knows about you through your wife, which is a different thing, and you know the difference or this would not be bothering you.

Let me show you a verse about what an ear does.

When the ear heard me, then it blessed me

There is a line in Job describing what used to happen when a man walked into a room.

When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me. (Job 29:11, King James Version)

When the ear heard me, then it blessed me.

Now notice the order in that sentence, because it is doing something exact. The hearing comes first, and the blessing comes after, and the blessing is a response to what the ear received rather than to anything else.

Something is given to a person specifically because they were heard.

You have a father in law whose ear has never once received you, and a man who has not been heard has never once been a man who was not worth hearing. Job 29:11 puts the blessing after the hearing and never once before it, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with somebody who has been at a table for nine years.

Now stay on the second half, because it is the pair to the first and it is what you have had.

The eye saw me, it gave witness to me. Seeing is the other channel, and it does something real, and it is what that man has had of you for nine years.

He has seen you. He has seen you carry things, and turn up, and sit with his grandson, and he has formed a real and warm opinion out of it.

He just has not heard you.

You have been seen for nine years by somebody whose ear has never been used, and being watched has never once been the same thing as being heard. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows what an old man has actually received of a son in law, and Job 29:11 names the two channels separately and gives each its own result.

And here is the third thing, which is the tense of the whole passage.

Job is remembering. The entire chapter is a man describing a time that has gone, and the reason it is so painful to read is that it is about something that was available and is not any more.

That chapter is what it looks like to run out of time on being heard.

You have not run out of anything yet, and a chapter written in the past tense has never once had to describe a man who is still at the table. Job 29:11 is a memory rather than a report, and the Spirit of God is the one with a man who has nine years behind him and some ahead.

He is waiting and has no way to say so

Here is the practical half, and it is about the other man in this.

He has been waiting. That is my strong guess and I will tell you why I think so.

An older man whose daughter married somebody from outside does a particular kind of arithmetic about his own house. He watches the language stop with him. He knows his grandson will not have it. And a son in law who tried would be, without anybody saying a word about it, the single most reassuring thing that could happen in that house.

He cannot ask you. There is no version of that request that would not sound like a demand, so he will never once make it.

You have somebody at that table with no way to ask for the thing he most wants, and a man who cannot ask has never once been a man who does not want it. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what an old man has been quietly counting, and Job 29:11 makes the hearing the thing that draws the blessing out.

Now here is what actually happens when you say one sentence, and it is not what you are bracing for.

He will not evaluate it. That is the thing to understand. A man who has waited nine years to hear his son in law say anything in his own language is not going to grade the grammar. He is going to hear the fact that you tried, and the fact is the whole content of it.

The sentence is a carrier. Nothing about the quality of it matters at all.

You have a sentence whose content is the trying rather than the words, and an attempt has never once been marked by somebody who was hoping for it. Job 29:11 has the ear bless what it hears rather than assess it, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room when an old man hears his own language from a son in law.

And here is the thing about nine years, said plainly.

It does not make this harder. It makes it larger. Those are different, and the largeness is on his side rather than yours, because what lands on him after nine years is a great deal more than what would have landed in the first month.

You have been storing something up without meaning to.

You have nine years behind this making it weigh more rather than cost more, and a long wait has never once reduced what an arrival is worth. The Spirit of God is the one who has been present at nine years of that table, and the written word describes an ear that blesses the moment it receives something.

One sentence, and then English

So here is the assignment, and the second half is what makes it possible.

Say one prepared sentence to that person, and let the rest of it be in English.

One sentence. Prepared, rehearsed, written on a card in your pocket if you want it there. Say it to him directly, not to the room.

And then go into English for everything else, immediately, with no apology and no explanation.

You have one sentence to say and permission to stop there, and a prepared line has never once been worth less for having been prepared. Job 29:11 has the blessing follow the hearing without any inspection in between, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man saying something to his wife's father for the first time in nine years.

And here is what to make the sentence about, because the subject matters more than the grammar.

Say something about him. Not about yourself and not about the weather. Ask him about the thing he made, or the town he came from, or the photograph in the hall.

Because a question puts the next move in his hands and he will take it, in his own language, at length, and you will not follow most of it. That is fine. You are not there to understand the answer. You are there to have finally used the channel. Then stop, because one sentence is the assignment and the rest of the evening is allowed to be in English.

You have permission to not understand the answer at all, and a question asked badly has never once been a smaller gift than a conversation held well. The Spirit of God is the one at that table when an old man is asked something in his own language, and Job 29:11 puts the blessing squarely on the hearing.