I Asked Her To Keep Going And Felt Rude

You asked her, and then you spent the whole day deciding whether you had been rude.

You did it at the stall on Saturday morning. She switched, the way she always does, and you said something like would you mind staying in it with me, I am trying to learn, and she said of course and stayed in it, and you got about four minutes.

Four good minutes. The best four you have had all year.

And you walked home with your bag and started going over the sentence you had used. Whether it had sounded demanding. Whether it had put her on the spot in front of the woman behind you. Whether she had said of course because she meant it or because there is only one thing a person can say when they are asked that.

By the afternoon you had more or less decided you had imposed on her.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You asked for something for yourself, out loud, to somebody who did not have to say yes, and that is the part that is actually being processed.

It is not really about her. It is about what it costs you to want something visibly. You are somebody who arranges things so nobody has to be put out, and on Saturday you did the opposite in front of a stranger, and the whole day afterward was the bill arriving.

So I am not going to tell you she did not mind. I was not there. And it would not settle it anyway, because the question you have been chewing is not really whether she minded.

Because of his importunity

There is a parable in Luke about somebody knocking at midnight, and Jesus tells it to make a point about asking.

A man has an unexpected guest and no bread, so he goes to a neighbor's house in the middle of the night and knocks, and the neighbor is in bed with his children and does not want to get up.

I say unto you, Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many as he needeth. (Luke 11:8, King James Version)

Because of his importunity.

Importunity is not a flattering word. It means persistent asking that does not stop at the first refusal, and it is the sort of thing your whole personality is organized to avoid, and Jesus uses it approvingly.

You have done something the written word treats as commendable rather than rude, and asking out loud for what you need has never once been the same as imposing. Luke 11:8 puts the man's persistence on the good side of the story, and the Holy Spirit is the one walking home from a market with a woman and her bag.

Now notice what the parable does not do, because this is the part that matters for your Saturday.

It never asks whether the neighbor minded. That question is completely absent. He plainly did mind, in fact, because he says so in the verse before, and the parable does not treat his minding as a reason the asking was wrong.

You have been running a question the passage does not even ask, and whether somebody minded has never once determined whether the asking was right. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a careful woman to ask for a thing anyway, and Luke 11:8 leaves the neighbor's reluctance in the text without treating it as a verdict.

And here is the third thing, which is what the parable is actually teaching.

Jesus is not telling this story about neighbors. He tells it and then says ask, and seek, and knock. The whole point of it is to get people to ask for things, and the man knocking at midnight is the example rather than the warning.

You were being taught to do exactly what you did on Saturday, and an example held up in scripture has never once been a thing to apologize for. Luke 11:8 leads directly into an instruction to ask, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has been rereading her own sentence since lunchtime.

Four minutes is what you asked for and got

Here is the practical half, and it starts with the thing the day buried.

You got four minutes. That has almost disappeared under the processing, and it is the only actual event of Saturday morning.

Four minutes of a real conversation with a native speaker who was paying attention, at a stall, with objects in front of both of you to point at. That is worth more than a week of anything you could do alone, and it happened because you opened your mouth.

The asking worked. That is not a small result and it has been entirely lost.

You have been given four minutes you could not have got any other way, and a thing that worked has never once needed to be audited afterward. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has forgotten what actually happened at that stall, and Luke 11:8 puts the persistent asking on the side the story approves of.

Now here is the thing about her, and I want to be careful because I genuinely was not there.

What I can tell you is what the request actually asked of her. Nothing extra. She was going to speak to you for four minutes either way, and you asked her to do it in the language she uses all day rather than the one she switches into. That is less work for her, not more.

The request you agonized over made her job slightly easier.

You have been apologizing in your head for a request that cost her nothing, and asking somebody to use their own language has never once been an imposition on them. Luke 11:8 has a man ask for actual bread in the middle of the night and calls him an example, and the Holy Spirit is the one who knows what four minutes at a stall cost anybody.

And here is what the day of processing has really done, said plainly.

It has attached a price to asking. Not a real price, but a felt one, and at that stall next time the memory of Saturday afternoon arrives before the memory of the four minutes, and it makes the next request harder rather than easier.

That is the actual damage, and it was done by the going over rather than by anything that happened at the stall.

You are the one who decides which half of Saturday you keep, and four minutes has never once been undone by an afternoon of reviewing it. The Spirit of God is the one who gets a woman back to the same stall, and the written word teaches the asking and never once teaches the aftermath.

Same stall, same request

So here is the assignment, and it is the same thing again on purpose.

Try again with the same person, in the same language, once more this week.

The same stall. The same woman. And ask again, in about the same words, without apologizing for last week and without checking whether it was all right.

You have one request to make for the second time, and asking twice has never once turned a reasonable request into a demand. Luke 11:8 commends a man who asks and then asks again, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that stall with a woman opening her mouth for the second Saturday running.

And here is what to do on the walk home, because that is where the damage happens.

Do not review it. That is the whole instruction and it is harder than the asking.

If the reviewing starts, and it will, say one sentence instead: I asked, and she said yes, and I got four minutes. That is the whole factual record of the morning, and it takes six seconds to say, and it is true. Then stop, because one request is the assignment and nobody owes anybody an apology for Saturday.

You have permission to stop auditing a thing that went well, and a walk home has never once been the place a good four minutes gets decided. The Spirit of God is the one walking home from a market with a woman who is not going over it, and Luke 11:8 sends people off to ask rather than to check afterward whether they should have.