He Brought the Wrong Thing

He spent about three hours choosing it, which he now understands was three hours of not going.

It is a good book. He read it himself years ago in a bad stretch and it did something for him, and he went and found a clean copy rather than lending his own because his own has annotations in it that are nobody else's business.

He wrote something on the flyleaf. He rewrote it twice.

Their son died at thirty four. The funeral was on a Monday and he did not go to the house afterward because he thought it would be crowded, and then it was Thursday, and then it was the following week, and by the time he was standing in the hallway with the book in a paper bag it was eleven days.

The father let him in. There were two other people in the front room and the television was on with the sound off and somebody had made too many sandwiches.

And in the four steps between the front door and the room he understood, completely and all at once, that they did not want the book.

They wanted somebody in the house. That is all. Somebody who had known him, sitting on a chair, for a while.

He gave them the book anyway because he was holding it. He stayed twenty minutes. He has thought about that hallway for about eight months.

Sit down. There is a verse about which house it is better to go to, and it is worth reading if you have been choosing books instead.

Better to go to the house of mourning

Here it is, and it is not a pious sentiment, it is a piece of very hard headed advice.

It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for this is the end of all mankind, and the living will lay it to heart.Ecclesiastes 7:2

Better to go. Not better to send something. Not better to write. Go, in your body, to the house.

And the reason given is startlingly unsentimental. Because that is where everybody ends up, and because being in the room does something to the living that nothing else does.

That is a verse about attendance, and it treats attendance as a thing with its own value independent of what anybody says or brings.

You were right about the house and wrong about the delivery. Ecclesiastes 7:2 asks for you to be there rather than for you to arrive with something, and the Spirit inspired an instruction about going rather than about giving.

What three hours of choosing was

Now the book, because it needs looking at honestly and not harshly.

It is a good book and the impulse was love. That has to be said first and it is true.

But three hours is a long time to choose a paperback, and eleven days is a long time to arrive, and the two of those are connected. Choosing was doing something for a man who was not yet able to knock on a door where a thirty four year old had died.

That is not a character failure and it is extremely common, particularly in men who are competent. A competent man in front of an unfixable thing will reach for the nearest thing he can do well, and choosing a book well is something he can do.

You were not being cowardly. Nothing written anywhere condemns a man for taking eleven days, and the Spirit was in the three hours as well as in the hallway, and He is the one who gave you the understanding on the fourth step.

And notice that the understanding came. That matters. Most people never get it, and go on sending things for the rest of their lives.

You were given something in that hallway rather than caught out in it. What is written puts the value on being in the house, and the Spirit is the one who made that plain to a man on the fourth step with a paper bag in his hand.

What eight months means

Here is the part that turns this into something rather than leaving it as a regret.

That hallway has been running for eight months. Which means something is now known that was not known in the spring, and it is a thing very few people ever learn, and there is a family eleven miles away who could still benefit from it.

Eight months is not too late. The eighth month is roughly when everybody else has stopped, and a man arriving in the eighth month with nothing at all in his hands is a considerably rarer thing than a man arriving on the third day with a casserole.

Go back. Take nothing. Say you have been thinking about their son and ask them something about him. Ecclesiastes 7:2 says it is better to go, and the Spirit is not measuring what is in a man's hands at the door.

And do not apologize for the eleven days or explain the book, because an apology turns the visit into your business and puts them in the position of reassuring you. They will almost certainly not have been keeping score in the way you have. What they will have noticed, if anything, is the eight months of nobody, and that is answered by a man on a chair rather than by an account of why he was not there.

And go back again after that. One visit in the eighth month is a kindness. A standing arrangement, however small, is something else entirely, and it is what almost nobody offers. A monthly hour with a family whose son died is not a large thing to give and there is very likely nobody else on earth currently offering it.

You are permitted to arrive late and empty. What is written asks for the going rather than for the timing or the contents, and the Spirit is not finished with a man who understood something in a hallway eight months ago.