He Stayed To Look After His Mother

Somebody said it again on the weekend and it went through the room.

Such a sacrifice. Said warmly, said admiringly, said by somebody who meant it entirely as praise.

And your son said something light and changed the subject, and everybody moved on, and you have been chewing on it since Saturday without being able to say what was wrong with it.

Here is what was wrong with it.

A sacrifice is a thing given up. It is a subtraction. And when the word is used about a nineteen year old, warmly, at a family gathering, what it quietly files is that his real life is happening somewhere else and that this is the cost of not being in it.

That is not what anybody meant. It is what the word does.

And he has heard it about eleven times since the summer, and each time somebody says it, a little more of what he is actually doing gets recategorized as absence.

Let them learn first to shew piety at home

There is an instruction in First Timothy that is startling in what it ranks first.

But if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents: for that is good and acceptable before God. (1 Timothy 5:4, King James Version)

Let them learn first.

First. Before the other things. Before whatever else somebody might be doing with a life, the instruction places the caring for people at home at the front of the sequence, and it does so in a letter that is otherwise full of instructions about work in the wider world.

And then it attaches an assessment to it: for that is good and acceptable before God.

Not: this is a necessary but unfortunate duty. Not: this is admirable in the circumstances. Good and acceptable, which are the words used elsewhere for offerings, applied here to a young person caring for somebody at home.

You are watching a thing that Scripture puts first and calls good, and caring for somebody at home has never once been a subtraction from anybody's life. The Holy Spirit is the one in a front room after somebody said sacrifice on Saturday, and First Timothy 5:4 ranks it first and then names it good and acceptable before God.

And notice the verb. Learn.

Let them learn to shew piety at home. It is a thing that is acquired, practiced, got better at. It is described as a skill rather than as an endurance, and a person doing it is described as somebody in training rather than as somebody waiting.

You have a son in training rather than a son on hold, and a thing that is learned has never once been the same as a thing that is merely borne. The written word calls it learning and puts it at the front, and the Spirit of God is the one who reclassifies a life that a word has been quietly filing wrongly.

What the word is doing to him

Now the practical part, and it is about him rather than about the relative who said it. He is nineteen and he is deciding what this is.

That is what happens at nineteen. A person is in the middle of working out what kind of life they are having, and the vocabulary available to them is supplied almost entirely by the adults around them.

And the word he has been handed eleven times since June is sacrifice.

So when he is forty and looks back at these years, the frame he will use is the frame he was given at nineteen, unless somebody in his own house gives him a different one.

You are able to hand him a different word before the frame sets, and a vocabulary supplied at nineteen has never once stayed in the year it was given. First Timothy 5:4 supplies the words good and acceptable rather than the word sacrifice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a different frame in a young man's hands.

And here is the second thing, which is about the room rather than about him.

Nobody will contradict it.

That is the difficulty with a compliment. When somebody says such a sacrifice, warmly, in a room, there is no polite way for anybody present to disagree, because disagreeing sounds like diminishing what he is doing.

So the word stands, every time, unopposed, in a room full of people who all love him.

You are able to put another word in the same room without arguing with anybody, and a compliment left standing has never once been a compliment that everybody present agreed with. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands a household a sentence that starts no argument, and First Timothy 5:4 supplies its own vocabulary and disputes nobody else's.

A road that is not the expected one is not a verdict on anybody.

You are able to say the other thing without contradicting anybody, and a word left standing eleven times has never once been left standing because everybody agreed with it. 1 Timothy 5:4 names the thing good and acceptable in plain terms, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies a sentence that does not require an argument.

Say it is a good thing, in front of him

So here is the thing to do, and the word choice is the whole instruction.

Say out loud, once, in front of him, that this is a good thing to be doing. And use no other word.

Not admirable. Not selfless. Not a credit to him. Every one of those is the same category as sacrifice: they all describe a person rising to something unfortunate, and they all quietly confirm that the thing itself is a cost.

Good. That is the word. It is what he is doing that is good, not him for doing it.

You are able to put the goodness in the thing rather than in the person doing it, and one plain word has never once needed a compliment attached to land. It is written in First Timothy 5:4 that it is good and acceptable before God, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a front room where a father says the word good about what his son does.

And in front of him. That condition matters as much as the word.

The eleven sacrifices happened in front of him. A correction in private corrects nothing at all. He has to hear the other word in the same kind of room, from somebody in his own family, with people present.

And say it once. Not as a speech, not as a response to anybody, not immediately after somebody has used the other word, which would make it a correction and would embarrass everybody.

Some other evening, in passing, as an ordinary remark. This is a good thing to be doing.

You are able to say seven words in an ordinary voice, and a plain sentence dropped into an evening has never once needed a speech around it to be heard. Scripture puts the assessment in five plain words and moves straight on to the next instruction, and the same Spirit who kept it that brief is in the room when you say it.