Well, the alternative is worse.
That is the joke. Six words, delivered dry, and it gets a laugh every single time because his neighbor is a decent man with an easy laugh, and because it is genuinely quite funny the first two hundred times.
It comes out over the fence, usually on a Saturday, when Ray leans on the post and says something like, honestly, I do not know how you keep going. And out it comes, and Ray laughs and says fair enough, and they talk about the truck or the weather or the man at the end who has never once cut his verge.
He has been using it since the winter his wife got ill. That is coming up on four years.
Here is the thing about a joke, and he has thought about this while doing fence posts. A joke is a door with a spring on it. You open it a crack, you let the other man see there is something behind it, and then it shuts on its own before either of you has to decide anything. That is what makes it kind. That is also what makes it a wall, eventually, if it is the only door you own.
You have a joke. Or a shrug, or a phrase, or a particular way of exhaling. Everybody who has been asked too many times has a device, and the device works, and that is exactly the problem.
Price the joke before we replace it
Nobody has, so let us do it properly.
It has cost him Ray, in the sense that matters. Four years of Saturdays with a man who would have sat down on the step with him if the door had ever stayed open, and who has now learned, correctly, that this is not that kind of conversation.
It has cost him the practice of saying anything true out loud, and a man loses that the way he loses a language. Slowly, and then completely, and then he cannot get it back when he needs it in a doctor's office.
And it has cost him the one thing he would want most, which is somebody in the district who knows what the winters are actually like in that house.
You have been paying for a device that works, and God has never once been shut out by a joke over a fence. Psalm 139:2 says He understands your thought from far off, and the same Spirit is the one who takes that off a page and puts it out by a fence post on a Saturday morning. The joke has never once landed on Him and He has never once required a better answer.
The lip of truth, and how long a thing lasts
There is one line built for a man with a device.
The lip of truth shall be established for ever: but a lying tongue is but for a moment.Proverbs 12:19
It is a proverb, which means it is a comparison rather than a rule, and the comparison is about durability. Established for ever against for a moment. And a joke is not a lie, so do not hear this as a charge; hear it as an engineering note. A device that shuts a door in one second gives you one second of relief and no structure.
A true sentence is load bearing. It stays up. Somebody can come back to it next Saturday and lean on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes established into a thing a man can build a friendship on rather than a saying about honesty.
You have a true sentence available that will still be standing next year, and it does not cost you the joke. That is not a soft reading of a proverb. The written word compares durability rather than morality, and the Spirit is the one who makes an honest four seconds into something with a footing under it.
And let me say the thing that has to be said, because this site would be a cruelty otherwise. The true sentence is not a way in. It is not an opening for a conversation about God with Ray, and nothing here is asking you to witness over a fence. What Ray does with it is Ray's, and it was never your job to manage.
What the true sentence actually is
The constraint is narrow and it is the same for everybody. True. Short. And it must not put him on display.
Which rules out the joke, which fails the first test, and it rules out telling Ray what the winter of the second year was actually like, which fails the third, and which he would rather do almost anything than do.
What is left is smaller than he thinks. Some days I do not, if I am honest. Or: I am not going to make a joke this time, it is hard. Or, and this is the shortest one: it is hard, Ray. Thanks for asking.
You are allowed to hand a neighbor one true thing and stop there, and the stopping is not dishonesty. Proverbs 12:19 gives the true lip the durability, and it is His Spirit who makes four honest seconds land without a speech behind them.
One plain sentence before we go on. If the four years have gone somewhere heavier, and if there are hours where carrying on is genuinely a question, please say it out loud today to one real human being, and if it is urgent, call your doctor or a crisis line first. That is not the joke failing. That is what a true sentence is for, arriving properly.
So write one down and keep the joke.
That is the honest counsel here. The joke is fine and it is kind and there are people it is exactly right for. But a man who owns only one door cannot choose, and choosing is the whole freedom on offer this morning.
You have a second door available, and having it does not obligate you to open it on any given Saturday. Proverbs 12:19 is the ground under that, not my sympathy, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a written line and makes it something a man can actually get out of his mouth over a fence.
And when you have said it, that is the end of your part. Ray will manage. He is a grown man with an easy laugh and he has been waiting four years.
You were never required to be funny about it, and God has not once needed a joke from you to stay in the conversation. Psalm 34:18 says He is near to the broken hearted, and the same Spirit who wrote that has been at that fence every Saturday for four years.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the yard or the truck. Christ is in you and you are in Him, and the true word was given to you, so the authority to say how it actually is belongs to you rather than to a fence line. Scripture is the ground here, not my sympathy for four hard years, and His Spirit is the one who makes a line like this land in a man who has used the same joke two hundred times. However He answers about your wife, the outcome is His, and managing what Ray does with an honest sentence was never a job He handed you.
- Same joke over the same fence, you are not the whole of what I have to say. Proverbs 12:19 gives the lasting to the true lip and gives the moment to everything else, and a device that shuts a door has no footing under it.
- Habit of being funny about the worst thing in my life, you do not get another Saturday. Four years of the spring loaded door is enough, and in the name of Jesus the Holy Spirit is carrying what I have been carrying behind six words.
- Lord, You are near to the broken hearted and You have never once needed a joke from me to stay in the conversation. Your word says the lip of truth is established for ever. I thank You, and I have one true sentence written on the back of a receipt in the truck.
Proverbs 12:19
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