They Ask About One And Not The Other

Four people asked about his brother on Sunday. Nobody asked about him.

And he was standing there. Making the tea, mostly. Handing things round. Present for all four conversations, and at no point in any of them did anybody turn and ask what he had been doing.

It is not unkindness and it is not favoritism. It is that one of your sons has done a thing with a name on it, which gives people a ready made question, and the other one has a life that requires somebody to think of a question themselves.

And people do not think of questions. They use the ones that are handed to them.

Here is what I want to name at the start, because it will make the rest of this land properly: he has noticed.

Not resentfully. He is not sulking and he has not said a word about it. But he is nineteen and he can count, and he has been in that room for four of those conversations, and he has been in a lot of rooms since September.

Son, thou art ever with me

There is a sentence at the end of the story of the prodigal that almost nobody preaches on, and it is the most useful line in the whole parable for a family like yours.

And he said unto him, Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine. (Luke 15:31, King James Version)

That is the father, speaking to the older brother, in the middle of a party for somebody else.

And notice what he does not do. He does not defend the party. He does not explain the younger son. He does not tell the older one to be less bothered.

He tells him what he is.

You are able to say what one of them is instead of accounting for the other, and a young man outside a party has never once needed the party justified to him. Luke 15:31 answers a wounded son with a statement about himself and nothing about anybody else, and the Holy Spirit is the one who hands a parent the right sentence for the son in the room.

You are able to tell one of them what he is rather than explain the other one, and a young man standing outside a celebration has never once needed the celebration defended to him. Luke 15:31 has the father answering with a statement about the son in front of him, and the Holy Spirit is the one in a front room where four people asked about somebody who was not there.

And the words themselves are worth slowing down on. Thou art ever with me.

Ever with me. The whole of the thing that the older son cannot see is that his position was never lesser: it was continuous. He has had, all along, the thing that the party is celebrating the return of.

The father names the continuity as the gift.

You have a son whose position is continuous rather than lesser, and being the one who is always there has never once been the same as being the one who counts less. The Spirit of God is the one who tells a household what the quiet position actually is, and the written word names the ever with me as the very thing that was his.

What the pattern teaches him

Now the practical part, and it is about the room rather than about your son.

Every conversation trains a room.

Four people asked about the absent one because the absent one has the available question. And each time it happened, in front of him, the room learned a little more that this is what is asked about in this house, and the next visitor will do the same thing, because that is what the room now does.

Nobody decided it. It is a groove, worn by repetition, and it will deepen every Sunday until somebody interrupts it.

You are able to interrupt a groove before it deepens, and a pattern nobody chose has never once been a pattern that had to continue. Luke 15:31 has a father going out to the one who is standing outside, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a thing that four Sundays have been building.

And here is what it is teaching him, which is the part that will last. Not that he is loved less. He knows he is not.

That his life does not generate questions. That is the lesson, and it is much more corrosive than favoritism would be, because it is not about anybody's feelings toward him. It is a fact about the world as he has experienced it since September: what he does is not the kind of thing people ask about.

At nineteen, that is a formative piece of information, and it is being confirmed weekly by decent people who mean nothing by it.

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

You are able to prove the opposite in front of witnesses, and a life that nobody asks about has never once been a life that was not worth asking about. Luke 15:31 has the father leaving the party to go out and speak to the one who did not come in, and the Spirit of God is the one who moves a parent toward the son in the room.

Ask him in front of them

So here is the thing to do, and the timing of it is the whole instruction.

Ask him one question about his own week, in front of whoever is there, immediately after somebody has asked about his brother.

Immediately after. That is the entire mechanism.

Because a question asked later, privately, in the kitchen, is a consolation, and he will receive it as one. A question asked in the same room, thirty seconds after the other one, in front of the same people, is not a consolation. It is the room being corrected, without anybody being told off.

You are able to correct a room without telling anybody off, and one question asked thirty seconds later has never once embarrassed a single person present. The Holy Spirit is the one in a front room where a parent turns and asks the other one, and it is written in Luke 15:31 that the father spoke directly to the son who was standing outside.

And make it a real question about the actual week.

Not: and how are you. That is the same nothing, in a different direction. Ask about the specific thing: how the job went on Thursday, what happened with the thing he mentioned, whether the man he works with is still doing the thing that annoys him.

A specific question tells the room two things at once: that there is content in this life, and that his parents know what is in it.

And the visitors will follow. They will, almost immediately, because people take their cue from the room, and once they have seen that there is a question available they will use it next time.

You are able to hand a whole room a question it did not have, and a specific enquiry about a Thursday has never once been less interesting than a general one about somebody far away. Scripture puts the father's words directly to the son in front of him without any reference to the other one, and the same Spirit who kept that order is in the room on Sunday.