He Ruined the Model I Made for Six Weeks

It was our tractor, made out of tin cans and wire, and it took six weeks and I am not going to pretend it was easy or that I did it quickly.

There were about four hundred separate pieces of wire in it. I know because I ran out twice. It had the mudguards and it had the steering wheel and the wheel turned, which took me two evenings on its own, and my dad said a thing about it that I am going to keep for the rest of my life, which was that he could tell I had built it from the seat outward.

I left it on the low table because it was drying.

Bucky came in the back door. Not for the tractor, because he does not know what a model is and would not care if he did. He came in the way he comes in, and the low table is between the door and the counter, and he put one foot in the middle of it.

One foot. Six weeks.

Here is the thing that I want to say properly, because grown-ups get this wrong when they explain it to children. He is not sorry. I do not mean he has not said sorry, I mean the concept does not exist in that animal, and there is no future in which it does, and waiting for it would be like waiting for the barn door to apologize.

I sat on the floor and cried about it for a while and my dad let me and did not say anything at all.

And then in the evening he asked me what I was going to do about the goat, and I said what could I do, and he said that was the right answer and it was also the whole of it.

I said it was all right. Out loud, to a goat, in a kitchen, which is a ridiculous thing to do and I did it anyway.

I started again on the Tuesday. It is about a third done. It is better than the first one because I know how the steering works now.

The last two words are the whole verse

Paul gives an instruction about forgiving and then attaches a standard to it, and the standard is where everything in this category lives.

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. (Colossians 3:13)

Even as. That is the measure. Not as much as you can manage, not once they have earned it, not when it feels resolved. The pattern named is a specific historical act and the instruction is to copy the pattern.

So the question stops being how forgiving somebody feels and becomes what the pattern actually was, and the pattern is a matter of record rather than of opinion.

You are being given a pattern to copy rather than a feeling to produce, and Colossians 3:13 says even as Christ forgave you. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as a relief for anybody who has been waiting to feel differently.

And the pattern is described elsewhere with a piece of timing that settles the whole question about apologies.

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. (Romans 5:8)

While we were yet. Not after. Not once anybody had turned round. The order in that sentence is the order, and it puts the forgiving before any change in the one being forgiven.

You have been forgiven in an order that never waited on you being sorry first. Romans 5:8 puts the timing beyond argument, and His Spirit is what makes that order something a person can copy rather than only admire.

What forgiving is not

There is a thing that needs saying plainly to a child holding a wrecked thing, because the tidy version does damage.

Forgiving is not saying it did not matter. Six weeks mattered. Four hundred pieces of wire mattered, and a person who says otherwise to a child is teaching them that their own work was nothing, which is a worse lesson than unforgiveness.

The old word behind forgiving in the New Testament is about releasing, letting something go out of your hand. It says nothing at all about the size of the thing being released, and God describes His own version of it with an even stronger word.

I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins. (Isaiah 43:25)

Blotteth out. That is an ink word, about a written thing being removed from a page. And the reason given is startling: for mine own sake. Not because anybody deserved it and not because anybody asked.

You are not being asked to call it small, and Isaiah 43:25 uses a word about ink rather than a word about feelings. The Spirit of God is what makes that a release rather than an obligation.

You have been given something to put down rather than something to feel. Isaiah 43:25 gives God's own reason as His own sake rather than anybody's apology, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a prophet's page into a kitchen with wire on the floor.