What He Is Allowed to Say

They have been fishing off that pier for twenty years and neither of them has ever said anything remotely important on it, which is most of the point of the pier.

Susan died in March. Twenty six years married. His friend has been out here three times since and they have talked about a truck, and about a man they both dislike, and about whether the pilings need doing.

He knows exactly what he thinks about where Susan is. He also knows that his friend does not believe any of it, has never believed any of it, and has said so plainly, once, about eleven years ago, in a way that was not hostile and closed the subject permanently.

So there is a very specific problem on that pier, and it is not a theological one.

If he says the thing he actually believes, he risks the twenty years. Not dramatically. His friend would not storm off. He would go polite, and the going polite would be permanent, and the fishing would continue and would never be the same.

And if he says nothing, which is what he has done three times, then he is a man sitting next to somebody carrying the worst thing that has ever happened to him while holding the only thing he has that might help.

He has been running that loop since March. He is a practical man and it is the first problem in years he has not been able to think his way through.

Sit down on the cooler. There is a verse about being ready that most people quote as if it said something else.

Ready, when asked

Here it is, and read what it actually asks for.

But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.1 Peter 3:15

Prepared. To anyone who asks. Gentleness and respect.

That is a verse about readiness rather than about initiating, and it has been quoted for a century as though it were a command to raise the subject. It is not. It describes a person who is ready when the question comes, and it describes the manner in which the answer is given, and both of those are about restraint.

You are not under orders to open it. 1 Peter 3:15 puts the asking in the other person's hands and the readiness in yours, and the Spirit inspired the words gentleness and respect into the same sentence.

That takes the whole weight of the loop off. Your job on that pier is not to find the moment. It is to be a man who has an answer ready if his friend ever wants one, and to be the sort of person somebody would want to ask.

That second half is worth as much as the first. People do not ask questions like that of somebody who has been visibly waiting for the opening. They ask them of somebody who has plainly not been keeping score, which is exactly what twenty years of never raising it has built.

What twenty years of fishing already is

Now the three trips since March, because they have been read as failures.

Your friend has come out here three times. He did not have to. A man twenty six years married who has just buried his wife and who does not believe anything has chosen, three times, to sit for four hours next to you.

That is not a man waiting to be evangelized and it is not a man avoiding it. It is a man who has found the one place on earth where nothing is required of him, and you are the reason it is that place. Nothing written anywhere calls that a wasted afternoon, and the Spirit is at work in a room where a grieving man is not being handled.

Do not underestimate what that is. There is nothing else in his week where he is not being managed by somebody.

You are already handing him something. Nothing written anywhere made speech the only delivery, and the Spirit works through a man who keeps turning up with two rods and no agenda.

When it comes, and it may

Here is the practical part, and it has two halves.

The first is preparation. Work out now, on your own, what you would say in about three sentences if he asked. Not an argument. Not a case. What you actually hold, plainly, in the words you use for ordinary things. Because the moment will not give you time to compose anything and a man who has not thought about it says either too much or nothing.

The second half is harder. If it comes, it will not come as a question about doctrine. It will come as him saying something like: do you think she is anywhere. And the correct answer to that is not a summary of the resurrection.

Say what you hold, in about two sentences, and then stop, and let it sit there, and do not add to it. The stopping is the whole discipline. Everything that goes wrong between believers and their friends goes wrong in the sentences after the first two.

And there is a reason for that which is worth knowing in advance. The sentences after the first two are almost never for the other person. They are the speaker managing his own discomfort at having said something exposed, and a grieving man can feel that arriving and it converts an honest answer into a pitch. If you say two sentences and then ask him whether the pilings need doing, you will have done it exactly right.

You have something worth handing over. What is written asks you to be ready with a reason for the hope in you, and the Spirit is capable of doing something with two sentences on a pier that a full account would have prevented.