I Say Yeah To Words I Do Not Know

Danielle has said yeah to eleven words this year that she could not define.

She knows it is eleven because after the last one she sat in the car and wrote them down, the ones she could remember, on the back of the paperwork, and there were nine, and then she thought of two more on the drive home.

Here is how it goes, every time.

A man behind a counter explains something. He is not being difficult and he is not showing off. He is using the words he uses at work forty times a day, the way anybody does, and it does not occur to him that any of them are unusual because they are not unusual to him.

And somewhere in the middle of it a word arrives that Danielle has never heard.

And she has about a quarter of a second to decide, and in that quarter of a second the choice is not really between understanding and not understanding. It is between yeah and a whole conversation.

Because saying sorry, what is that? does not just get her a definition. It stops the flow. It makes him back up. It makes the man in the line behind her wait. And it puts a woman in a public room saying out loud that she does not know a word that everybody else in the building apparently knows.

So she says yeah. Every time. And the conversation carries on and finishes about ninety seconds sooner than it otherwise would.

And she drives home not knowing what was done to her car or why.

Her sister said in the spring, "You should just ask."

And Danielle said, "I know."

And her sister said, "So why don't you?"

And Danielle said something that was not the answer, and her sister let it go.

Yeah is not agreement, it is an exit

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to explain any of those eleven words. I have not seen your car and a stranger handing you a twelfth term would be doing the same thing again in a nicer voice. And I am not going to say a word against the man at the counter, because he did nothing wrong, and a person using the vocabulary of their own trade is not committing an offense.

What I want to look at is the quarter of a second, and what is actually being weighed in it.

Because Danielle is not choosing not to understand. Nobody chooses that. She is choosing between two costs, at speed, and one of them is public.

Now, here is the verse, and there is a small phrase in it that almost nobody notices and it is the entire message.

If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.James 1:5

And upbraideth not.

That is an old word and it has gone out of use, and because it has gone out of use people skim it. It means: does not reproach. Does not scold. Does not remind you that you should already have known this, or that you asked something similar last month, or that a person your age might reasonably be expected to have picked it up by now.

James puts that in the sentence deliberately. He is describing an asking where the asking itself costs nothing.

And he puts it there because he knows exactly what stops people asking, and it is never the answer. It is the face that might come with it.

You are not somebody who does not want to know, and Scripture takes the trouble to promise that the giving comes without any reproach attached. It is written that God gives to all men liberally and upbraideth not, which addresses the exact fear that keeps a question in a person's mouth, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a counter as well as a prayer.

You have been paying a price for a question that God specifically declares free. James 1 names the not-upbraiding as part of the offer rather than as an afterthought, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that promise reach a Tuesday morning at a service desk.

A sentence that pauses instead of stopping

Here is the practical part, and it is one sentence, and the wording matters a great deal.

Sorry, what does that mean? is the sentence everybody reaches for, and it is the wrong one, because of what it does to a room.

It stops the conversation. It puts the whole thing on hold and turns the spotlight round, and it opens with an apology, which tells everybody present that something has gone wrong.

Try this one instead.

Say that again for me.

Five words. Look at what they do differently.

They do not apologize. They do not ask him to define anything, which means he does not have to change register or become a teacher. They ask for a repeat, which is the most ordinary request in any conversation, and which everybody makes about four times a day for reasons that have nothing to do with knowledge.

And here is the thing that makes it work. When a person repeats something, they almost never repeat it identically. They say it a second way. Slower, usually, and with one more piece of context in it, because that is what human beings do when asked to say a thing again.

So say that again for me very often produces the explanation without anybody having to request one.

And then, if it is still not clear, there is a second one, and it is also five words: and what does that do?

You have permission to ask for a repeat, and no verse anywhere requires a person to arrive at a counter already fluent. James 1 puts the asking on anybody who lacks and attaches no qualification to it, and the Spirit of God is what makes five plain words an act of wisdom rather than an exposure.

And I want to name the thing that is actually being protected, because it is not pride.

It is the line behind her.

Danielle would ask if the room were empty. She has said so. What she cannot do is make a stranger wait while she catches up, because she is a considerate person and being an inconvenience is worse to her than being uninformed.

That instinct is decent, and it is also mistaken about the arithmetic. Nobody in that line is timing her. And the four seconds it costs them is nothing beside a woman driving home not knowing what happened to her car.

You were never being an inconvenience, and Scripture treats the getting of understanding as the ordinary business of a person rather than an imposition on a room. It is written that wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom, and with all thy getting get understanding, which is Proverbs 4 making it a pursuit rather than a favor, and His Spirit is what makes four seconds of somebody else's time a completely reasonable price.