Too Old To Do The Voices

You did the wolf and the farmer for about six years and you have not done either of them since last winter.

Not a decision. It was more that one evening you read the page flat, because you were tired, and nobody complained, and then you read it flat again, and after about a month the voices had gone out of the house without anybody mentioning it.

And now there is a sentence in you that says you are too old for that. Which is not really about age, because you are forty three, and forty three is not too old for a wolf. It is about being tired, and about a small feeling that a man doing voices in a living room is a young father rather than a middle aged one.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what anybody ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the sentence, because it borrows its authority from a verse that says something else entirely.

When I became a man

There is a sentence in 1 Corinthians 13 that gets used to retire all sorts of things, and it is worth reading for what it actually names.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things. (1 Corinthians 13:11, King James Version)

Read the list of what he put away.

Speaking as a child. Understanding as a child. Thinking as a child. Those are the three, and every one of them is about a limitation. A child's way of understanding is smaller than an adult's, and Paul is describing the growth out of a limitation.

Now notice what is not on that list. Play is not on it. Delight is not on it. Nothing in that verse retires a man's capacity to make a room laugh, and nothing in it says a grown man may not do a wolf.

The chapter it sits in, in fact, is the one about love, and the verse before it is about things being done away when the perfect comes, and the whole context is about maturity being fuller rather than flatter.

You are looking at a verse that retires limitations and not delights, and doing the wolf has never once been on the list of childish things. 1 Corinthians 13:11 names speaking, understanding and thinking as a child and lists nothing else at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a living room where the voices stopped last winter.

There is one more thing worth having and it is a matter of who is speaking.

Paul is describing his own growth in the middle of a chapter about love. He is not handing anybody a rule about how a father should behave in his own house, and the verse has been doing that job for a very long time without any warrant.

You have a verse that was never a rule about your living room, and forty three has never once been too old for a voice a child asked for. It is written but when I became a man, I put away childish things, the list is three kinds of limitation and nothing more, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

The tiredness told the truth and then overreached

Here is the mechanism, and it is worth being fair to the tiredness.

The first flat page was correct. It was a tired evening, and reading it flat was the right call, and doing the voices when a man has nothing left is a way of ending up resenting a bedtime.

So the tiredness told the truth once and the flat page was the honest response.

You have delight that no verse ever retired, and one flat page last winter has never once been a statement about a man's age. His Spirit is in that armchair now, and it is written I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, and play is nowhere on the list.

What happened next is where it went wrong. One flat page became a policy, and the policy acquired a justification, and the justification borrowed a Bible verse, and now a temporary fact about one Tuesday has become a permanent statement about a man's age.

That is a normal thing for a policy to do. It happens quietly and it happens in about a month.

You are living under a policy that started as one tired evening, and one flat page has never once been a statement about who you are. 1 Corinthians 13:11 lists three limitations and stops, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who read a page flat last winter and never went back.

And there is a second layer, and it is the one that will cost you.

Nobody complained. That is the detail that made the policy stick, and it is also the most misleading thing in the whole story. Children do not complain about the loss of a voice. They notice, they file it, and they say nothing at all, because a child cannot ask a tired father to do a wolf without it feeling like a demand.

So the silence was not consent. It was two children being careful with you.

You have children who noticed and said nothing, and silence has never once been the same thing as not minding. The written word names the outgrowing of limitations and leaves every delight untouched, and His Spirit is the one who takes a policy off a man and hands the evening back.

One page out loud tonight

So here is the assignment, and it is one page rather than a restoration.

Read one page out loud to somebody in your house tonight.

One page. And do one voice in it. Not all of them, not the full performance, not an announcement that the voices are back.

One page and one voice, and it can be a bad one.

You are under no verse that retired your delight, and forty three has never once been an age at which a man puts down a good thing. The Holy Spirit is the one in that armchair with you, and 1 Corinthians 13:11 lists speaking and understanding and thinking as a child and puts play nowhere among them.

Here is why one voice rather than the wolf.

A restoration is a large thing and large things get postponed to a better evening, and there is no better evening coming this month. One voice in one page tonight is small enough to survive being tired, and it does the whole job, because the children are not tracking quality. They are tracking whether it is back.

And if it is a bad wolf, that is better. A bad wolf gets a laugh and a laugh ends the policy in about four seconds.

You are able to do one bad voice on one page tonight, and a wolf done badly has never once been worse than a page read flat. 1 Corinthians 13:11 says when I became a man, I put away childish things, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man doing a poor wolf in an armchair.

And if there are no children in the house any more, read a page out loud to whoever is there and do a voice anyway. That is a stranger instruction and it holds.

You have delight that no verse ever retired, and being forty three has never once been an age at which a man puts down a good thing. It is written I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child, the three items are limitations and play is nowhere among them, and the Spirit of God is saying it in a living room tonight.