I Told On Myself Before Anybody Asked

I want to tell this one carefully because it is the only story I have where I come out well and I do not entirely trust myself with it.

I took the good knife out of the kitchen drawer. The good knife is not for me and everybody in this house knows it is not for me, and I took it out to the yard to cut baler twine off a bale because the twine was tight and my hands are small.

I dropped it in the yard. Bucky came over, because Bucky comes over, and he put his foot on it and it went into the mud and I could not find it for about eleven minutes and when I found it the tip had gone into a stone and there was a chip out of the edge.

Nobody was in the kitchen. Nobody had asked me anything. Nobody was going to notice that knife until somebody wanted to cut something properly, which could have been that evening or could have been a week.

I went in and I put it on the counter and I said what I had done.

And then nothing happened for what felt like a very long time and was probably four seconds. Dad picked it up and turned it over and looked at the edge. And then he said, right, and put the kettle on, and asked me if I knew where the stone was.

We sharpened it that evening at the table. It took ages. He showed me the angle you hold it at, which is a real thing that he learned from his father, and the chip is still slightly there if you know where to look.

And the whole time we were doing it I was waiting for the other part, and the other part never came.

Later I asked him whether it counted, telling him before he asked. I did not know how to ask it and it came out badly. And he put the knife down and said that it counted for everything and that he was not going to explain why, and I have been working on the why ever since.

Where He wants it

The psalm is the most famous confession in the Bible and it has a line in the middle of it that is easy to walk past.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. (Psalm 51:6)

Desirest. Not requires. Not commands. Desires, which is a word about wanting, and the thing wanted is truth in a particular location.

And the location is not the mouth. The inward parts and the hidden part are the places nobody else has access to, which means what God is described as wanting is a person who is honest where there is no audience.

You are wanted honest in the place nobody can inspect, and Psalm 51:6 puts the desire there rather than on the tongue. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that read as intimacy instead of as a stricter rule.

Which is why getting there first is not a technicality. A person who says it before the question is asked is saying it out of the inward part rather than out of pressure, and those are two completely different acts even when the words are identical.

You have not been graded on the words, and the psalm locates the whole thing somewhere else. The written word says truth in the inward parts, and His Spirit is what makes that land in a child who has been wondering whether it counts.

What David asks for right after

The next thing he asks for tells you what he thinks the problem actually is, and it is not the incident.

Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. (Psalm 51:10)

Create. That is a word the Bible mostly saves for making something out of nothing. He is not asking for a repair and he is not asking to be let off, he is asking for something to be made.

And then, immediately: take not thy holy spirit from me. The thing he is most afraid of losing in the whole psalm is not his position or his reputation. It is the presence.

You are being made new rather than merely excused, and Psalm 51:10 uses the making word on purpose. The Spirit of God is what makes that read as generosity rather than as a bigger demand.

And the psalm ends with something practical: then will I teach transgressors thy ways. The person who has been through this becomes useful to other people who are in it, which is not a punishment and is closer to an appointment.

You have been given something to hand on rather than something to live down. Psalm 51:13 turns the whole experience outward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a psalm into a boy at a table with a sharpening stone.