He Has Scared Somebody He Loves and He Saw Their Face

He is not going to describe it and he does not have to, because anybody who has done it knows the face.

It is not the argument he remembers. He could not tell you what it was about now, which is its own kind of joke. It is about four seconds where somebody who has never been afraid of him in her life was afraid of him, and he watched it arrive and he watched her hide it, and the hiding is the part that stays.

That was in March.

Since then he has been very careful, which sounds like progress and is not. Being careful is a man managing a thing rather than a thing changing. He knows the difference and does not have a word for the second one.

And underneath the careful is a sentence he has not said to anybody, which is that he is now a category of person in his own head, and that the category has a name he would not use in front of her.

The verse permits it and limits it in one line

There is an instruction in Ephesians that does two things at once, and most people only ever hear one of them.

Be ye angry, and sin not: let not the sun go down upon your wrath. (Ephesians 4:26, King James Version)

Be ye angry, and sin not.

The first half is a permission. He does not say the feeling was the failure. If the feeling were the failure there would be nothing to separate from it in the second half of the phrase.

And that separation matters more than usual for a man who has decided that what happened in March is what he is. The verse is built on the assumption that those are two different things.

You are not the same thing as the four seconds. Ephesians 4 separates the anger and the sin inside one instruction, and it is the Holy Spirit, named three verses later in that same passage, who is at work in the difference.

God says how He has dealt with people

There is a sentence in Psalm 103 that is a report on conduct, and it is in the past tense.

He hath not dealt with us after our sins; nor rewarded us according to our iniquities. (Psalm 103:10)

He hath not dealt with us after our sins.

That is not a promise about the future, which would leave a man waiting to see. It is a statement about what has already been happening.

And it matters here because a man who has assigned himself a category is usually assuming God assigned it first. The psalm says the dealing has not been on that basis.

You have not been dealt with on the basis you assigned yourself. Psalm 103 puts it in the past tense as a report, and it is His Spirit who makes an old record reach a man sitting on a step in the evening.

The instruction after a fall names a job

There is a sentence in Galatians about what happens when somebody is caught out, and the verb in it is a repair word.

Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. (Galatians 6:1)

Restore such an one.

The word behind restore is the one used for setting a bone or mending a net. It is a trade word about putting something back into working order.

And read the last clause, because it is doing something. Considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted. The person doing the restoring is told to remember they are the same material.

That is not a system that produces categories of person. It is a system that assumes everybody is in the same one.

You are somebody the instruction says to put back into working order. Galatians 6 uses a mending word and then levels the two parties in the same sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a trade word do something to a name a man gave himself in March.

Proverbs describes the mechanism in the room

There is a proverb that is usually read as advice about being nice and is actually a description of physics.

A soft answer turneth away wrath: but grievous words stir up anger. (Proverbs 15:1)

Turneth away. Stir up.

Both of those are movement words. The proverb is describing what a sentence does to the temperature of a room, in either direction.

Which is useful for a man in March, because it says the four seconds were not a spontaneous event with no inputs. There was a sequence, and there were points in the sequence, and there is a version where a different sentence lands earlier.

You are not in a room where nothing is available to you. Proverbs 15 describes the mechanism in both directions, and it is His Spirit who makes a piece of old observation feel like something a man can use on a Tuesday.

And the naming is meant to be out loud

There is an instruction in James about where this gets said, and it is not to a wall.

Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. (James 5:16)

One to another.

He puts it in the plural and in both directions. It is not a man reporting to somebody above him. It is two people who both have faults, saying them.

And the stated outcome is healing rather than a verdict, which tells you what the exercise is for.

You are told to say it to a person rather than carry it. James 5 makes it mutual and names healing as the outcome, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old instruction reach a man who has not said a sentence out loud since March.