He Thinks Turning Means Becoming Somebody Boring

He has a picture in his head of the man he would have to become, and he does not like him.

Quiet. Careful. Somebody who leaves at nine thirty. Somebody with a smaller laugh and a shorter list of things he finds funny, who says nice at the end of stories that used to get a real reaction.

He has never checked whether that picture is accurate. He assembled it somewhere around fifteen, out of two or three people he actually met, and it has been sitting in his head unexamined ever since, doing a great deal of work.

So the arithmetic he runs is not really about the one thing he would have to put down. It is about everything he assumes comes with it.

And when he says out loud that he is not ready, what he means is that he does not want to be that man. He is not being defiant about it. He is being protective of a life he likes parts of, which is a different thing, and nobody has ever asked him which one it is.

The psalm puts the pleasure on His side

There is a line at the end of Psalm 16 that says where a particular thing is kept, and it is not where most people would put it.

Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore. (Psalm 16:11, King James Version)

Pleasures. Plural. At His right hand.

That is not a word a man expects to find on that side of the table. Most people are working from a diagram where the enjoyable things are over here and the correct things are over there, and the whole exercise is about how much of the first pile you have to surrender.

The psalm has them in the wrong place for that diagram, and it is not the only verse that does.

You are not being asked to hand over the whole of what makes a life good. Psalm 16 puts fulness of joy and pleasures on God's side and says so plainly, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old line reorganize a diagram somebody built at fifteen.

The first thing Jesus did was save a party

There is a scene at a wedding that is worth reading for what it is rather than for the miracle in it.

The wine runs out, which in that culture was a public humiliation for the family hosting.

He fixes it. And the man in charge of the feast, who does not know where it came from, says this:

Every man at the beginning doth set forth good wine; and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse: but thou hast kept the good wine until now. (John 2:10)

Read what the compliment is. The quality went up.

Whatever else is happening in that chapter, the first recorded public act of Jesus is making a celebration better rather than shorter, and John says outright it was the beginning of miracles.

You are dealing with somebody whose first recorded act made a party better. John 2 says it was the beginning of miracles and describes the improvement, and it is His Spirit who makes an old wedding stop being a footnote.

God once told people to spend money on whatever they wanted

There is an instruction in Deuteronomy that people are always surprised to find in the Bible.

It is about a festival where people traveled a long distance, and the law says that if the journey is too far to carry the offering, sell it and take the money instead. And then this:

And thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after, for oxen, or for sheep, or for wine, or for strong drink, or for whatsoever thy soul desireth: and thou shalt eat there before the LORD thy God, and thou shalt rejoice, thou, and thine household. (Deuteronomy 14:26)

For whatsoever thy soul desireth.

That is in the law. In a book people think of as the strict one. God is telling a nation to buy what they actually want and eat it in front of Him and enjoy themselves.

You are not looking at a God who is against a good table. Deuteronomy 14 puts the instruction in the law itself, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old festival rule land on a man who assembled his picture at fifteen.

Joy gets described as a load-bearing thing

There is a line in Nehemiah, said to people who were crying, that treats joy as structural.

Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength. (Nehemiah 8:10)

Eat the fat and drink the sweet. That is the instruction. On a holy day.

And then joy is called strength, which makes it a working part rather than a decoration.

Nobody in that verse is being told to be sober about it. They are being told to stop being sorry and go and eat well.

You are told to eat the fat and drink the sweet on the holy day itself. Nehemiah 8 gives the instruction and then calls joy a strength, and it is His Spirit who makes an old feast day sound like something a man would want to be at.

And Paul says why the good things are there

There is a sentence in a letter to Timothy that names the purpose out loud.

Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not highminded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. (1 Timothy 6:17)

Richly all things to enjoy.

Paul is in the middle of a warning about where a man puts his trust, and the warning is real. And even inside the warning he says what the things are for.

Not to endure. Not to manage carefully. To enjoy.

You are given things by somebody who says outright what they are for. 1 Timothy 6 puts the purpose inside a warning rather than against it, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that combination hold without collapsing into one side.