The Question on the Walk Home

For the parent who froze at a question between the school gate and the corner.

Who decided you needed a syllabus in your head before you were allowed to answer your own child?

It's a fourteen minute walk. She asks somewhere around minute four, between the postbox and the place where the pavement narrows. She asks it the way children ask enormous questions, which is casually, while looking at something else.

Why did God let Grandad die.

You've eleven minutes of pavement left and nothing prepared. There's a bag on your shoulder, a bag on hers, and a lorry going past that buys you four seconds.

So you say something. What comes out is honest but unfinished, and you go back to correct yourself twice before the corner. She says oh, then tells you about a girl in her class who has got a rabbit.

By the corner you've decided you handled it badly, and by the front door you've extended that into a general verdict about what your children are missing.

Correcting yourself twice taught her that accuracy matters here, and no polished answer could. The Word says that the talking onto a road rather than into a prepared hour, and the Spirit was in eleven minutes of pavement.

Where the Syllabus Idea Came From

You have an idea of what a good answer looks like, and it's worth asking where you got it.

It's structured. It anticipates the follow-up. It doesn't contradict itself halfway through, and it doesn't need correcting twice before the corner. It sounds, if you're honest, like something delivered by a person standing at the front of a room who'd had a week to prepare it.

That's a fine thing in its place. It's also a completely different activity from walking home with a child, and you've been grading a conversation by the standards of a lecture.

The passage never asks for a lecture. It asks for talking on the road, which by its nature is unprepared, interrupted by lorries, and followed by a rabbit.

There's a second reason the lecture standard is the wrong one. A lecture is delivered once, to a room, by somebody who won't be there tomorrow. You have another fourteen minute walk on Thursday, and one the Thursday after that, and several thousand more before she leaves home.

Nothing has to be finished today. That's the practical difference between a road and a platform, and it's the whole reason the road is the better arrangement.

You aren't required to deliver a lecture, because Scripture asked for talking on a road. It is written that it in the walking, and the Spirit makes that the real arrangement rather than the improvised one.

When Thou Walkest by the Way

Here's the verse, and one phrase in it is about journeys specifically.

And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up.Deuteronomy 6:7 (KJV)

When thou walkest by the way. Not when you have prepared. Not when the subject arises appropriately in a suitable setting. While you are walking, between one place and another, with whatever happens to be in your head at the time.

That's the least controllable of the four settings. A house you can arrange and bedtime you can plan, but a road hands you whatever it hands you, and Moses names it anyway.

He names it second, in fact, immediately after the house, which puts it ahead of both the evening and the morning. Whatever else that ordering means, it doesn't suggest the unprepared setting was treated as the weakest of the four.

Those words went first to a people who were about to spend a great deal of their lives walking, and they arrive on a pavement without narrowing.

You were on the road, which is one of the four places the verse names by name. Scripture's instruction puts the talking in the walking, and the Spirit was in eleven minutes between a postbox and a corner.

Correcting Yourself Twice Was the Best Part

Say what was actually good about that walk, because it's the bit you're most ashamed of.

You corrected yourself twice. You said something, thought better of it, and said something more accurate, out loud, in front of your daughter.

She watched her mother care enough about being right on this subject to go back and fix it mid-sentence. That's a lesson about the seriousness of the material, and it's one she could never have received from an answer that came out smoothly.

Consider what the alternative would have taught her. A mother who says the first thing and lets it stand, because going back would look uncertain, teaches a child that the appearance of confidence outranks getting it right. That's a lesson with a very long tail on it.

A child who sees an adult correct themselves about God learns that this is a subject where accuracy matters. A child who only ever hears polished answers learns that it's a subject where performance matters.

Those two children grow into very different adults, and only one of them can survive a hard question at nineteen.

The other one meets something at university that nobody warned her about and has no idea what to do with it, because the only model she ever saw was an adult who always had the answer ready. She concludes the material must be weaker than she was told, when what was actually weak was the performance she watched.

Your corrections taught her what accuracy is worth, which no smooth answer could. The written Word's instruction asks for the words in your heart rather than in your notes, and the Spirit used the going back as well as the saying.

I Am Not Telling You She Is Satisfied

Be honest, because pretending would help neither of you.

She's going to ask again. Probably in a year, probably differently, and she may well never be satisfied with any answer about why her grandfather died. Nobody ever is, and I won't promise you a conversation that closes the subject.

Nor am I telling you that a room with a teacher in it would have given her a better answer. It might have given her a tidier one. Tidier isn't always better, and she'd have got it from somebody who never met her grandfather.

What I want off you is the verdict you reached by the front door. Not the wish to have answered better. Not the ache about your father.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Eliana This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.