Bucky went off his feed on a Tuesday and I told the vet on Thursday that he had gone off it that morning.
That is the whole of the sin and I am going to sit in it for a paragraph, because a man my age telling a story like this in front of his own son ought to at least sit in it.
The reason I said it is not complicated and every farmer reading it already knows. If an animal has been off feed since this morning, that is an animal and a vet. If an animal has been off feed since Tuesday and it is now Thursday, that is a man who did not call on Tuesday, and the vet is a woman about thirty five who is very good at her job and who I have known since she was in school.
She looked at him and she asked me a second question, which was whether he had been drinking, and I said yes, since this morning.
And that is the thing about it. The first one was a lie. The second one was maintenance. There was nothing else I could have said to that second question that did not either be another lie or take the first one apart in front of her, and I had about a second and a half to decide, and I chose maintenance.
He was fine. It was a thing that passed and it would have passed on Tuesday and it passed on Thursday, and no animal was harmed by any of it, and that is not the point and I know it is not the point.
Toby was standing there. Nine years old, holding a bucket, and he had been there on Tuesday.
He did not say anything. He has never said anything about it. And I have carried that around for two years now, and I called that vet in the spring and told her, on the telephone, entirely out of the blue, and she was decent about it, and I would still rather have not needed to.
Two verbs and only one of them works
The proverb is one sentence and it puts two options side by side without any commentary at all.
He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy. (Proverbs 28:13)
Covereth. That is an active verb. It is not a state a person is in, it is a thing a person is doing, continuously, in the present tense. Covering takes maintenance, which is why the proverb chose that word rather than a word about hiding.
And the alternative is two verbs rather than one. Confess and forsake. Say it, and then leave it, because saying it and going back to it is not the arrangement being described.
You are not obliged to keep paying the upkeep on something. Proverbs 28:13 makes covering an ongoing activity and confession a single act, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that comparison land in a man who has been doing the upkeep.
The cost of a small lie is almost never the lie. It is the second question. Nobody plans the second question, and the second question is where a person finds out how much of their week the first answer has just claimed.
You have not been abandoned inside a thing you built by accident in a second and a half. The written word puts mercy at the end of the confessing rather than at the end of a probation, and His Spirit is what makes that available today rather than after a while.
What David does with the same idea
There is a psalm written by a man who covered something for the best part of a year, and he describes the physical experience of it in a way that surprises people.
When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is turned into the drought of summer. (Psalm 32:3, 4)
He is not describing guilt as an idea. He is describing it as weather and as physical weight, and anybody who has carried something knows he is being literal rather than poetic.
And then the turn happens in a single verse and it happens fast:
I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. (Psalm 32:5)
Read the timing in that. He says I said, I will confess, and the forgiving happens in the same sentence, before the confession is even reported as finished.
You are met at the intention rather than at the completed sentence. Psalm 32:5 puts the forgiving inside the same verse as the deciding, and the Spirit of God is what makes that speed believable to somebody who has been rehearsing.
You have not been kept waiting at any point in this. That is what the psalm reports rather than what a person braced for it expects, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that off a page and into a telephone call somebody has been putting off.
So here is what a man says in front of his own son about a thing that son already knows.
You are not required to maintain anything, and Proverbs 28:13 makes covering the ongoing job and confession the one that ends. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a proverb somebody reads and makes it the reason a man picks up a telephone in the spring.
I want to say the thing about Toby, because it is the part that actually moved me and it was not the vet.
He did not say anything. That is what did it. If he had told me I was a liar I would have had somewhere to put it, and instead he stood there holding a bucket and said nothing at all, and I have never in my life been more thoroughly answered.
You have not been left to keep something going by yourself. Psalm 32:5 has the forgiving arrive in the same breath as the deciding, and His Spirit is what makes that quick rather than careful in a person who expects careful.
And this is for whoever is reading it out loud tonight, who has one of these and knows exactly which one it is. You were never going to be charged for the upkeep on it forever. Proverbs 28:13 ends with mercy and puts nothing between the confessing and the mercy, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that plain enough to act on before the morning.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over what you have been covering is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God puts mercy on the far side of confession with nothing in between, so speak to the thing you have been maintaining: you have standing to address it because He is the one who set those terms. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Proverbs 28:13 and Psalm 32:5 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Story I have been maintaining, you are not worth what I am paying to keep you. The Word of God says he that covereth his sins shall not prosper, and covering is a present tense verb about ongoing work.
- Dread of the second question, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am forgiven and I am free to say it, because Psalm 32:5 has the forgiving arrive in the same sentence as the deciding.
- Father, You have never once made me wait between the saying and the mercy. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word puts confess and forsake together and then puts nothing at all between me and what You promised.
Proverbs 28:13
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