Plain Words For A Plain Promise

Thee. Thereto. Troth. Forsaking all other.

Nobody talks like that. Nobody has talked like that in four hundred years. And when you try to lay those sentences over the man asleep down the hall with his mouth open, the two things will not touch.

It is not that the words are bad. They are beautiful. That is half the trouble. They are so beautiful that they belong to a different order of thing entirely, and the man down the hall is not a different order of thing. He is a man who needs a haircut.

So you have been carrying a promise in one register and a marriage in another, and the gap between the two has started to feel like a problem with the marriage.

It is not a problem with the marriage. It is a translation issue, and translation issues are fixable in about a minute.

I am not going to tell you the ceremonial language does not matter, because you did not ask me that and it does. I am going to help you say the same thing in the plainest words you own, which is what will actually reach the hallway.

Said and therefore done

There is a line in Numbers that I keep coming back to because it is so unadorned it almost sounds rude.

hath he said, and shall he not do it? (Numbers 23:19, King James Version)

That is a question with one syllable words in it. It is not decorated. It could be said by anybody about anything.

And it is one of the most load bearing sentences about God in the whole of scripture. He said it, so it happens. That is the entire mechanism.

You are standing on something with no ornament in it at all, and Numbers 23 has never once needed elevated language to carry a promise. Numbers 23:19 puts the whole weight on said and therefore done, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes plain speech feel solid rather than cheap.

Notice what that does to your gap. If the mechanism of a promise is said and therefore done, then the ceremonial wrapping was never doing the work. The saying was.

You have a promise running on the plainest mechanism there is, and the beauty of the wording has never once been what made it hold. The passage asks whether a thing said gets done and treats the answer as obvious, and the Spirit of God is the one who applies that to a woman in a hallway at eleven at night.

Say it the way you would say anything true

Here is what I mean by plain, and I want to be concrete about it, because plain is a word people use vaguely.

Not: I plight thee my troth. Try: I am not going anywhere.

Not: forsaking all other. Try: there is nobody else and there is not going to be.

Not: in sickness and in health. Try: if you get sick, I am the one who deals with it.

You are translating a promise rather than shrinking it, and Numbers 23 has never once put the weight in the vocabulary. Numbers 23:19 states the entire mechanism in one syllable words, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a kitchen sentence carry what a chapel sentence carried.

Not: until death us do part. Try: this does not have a stopping point.

Read those four in a row. They sound like something a person would actually say standing in a kitchen with a dish towel over her shoulder.

And that is the register your marriage lives in. Not because your marriage is small, but because everybody's marriage lives there. The ceremony was one afternoon. The hallway is where the promise is being kept.

You are able to say the whole promise in the language of your own house, and the plainness has never once made it a lesser thing. Numbers 23:19 states the entire mechanism of a promise in words a child could read, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a vow out of a chapel and puts it in a hallway.

You have a promise that survives translation, and it has never once needed the four hundred year old wording to remain true. It is written that what He has said, He does, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a plain sentence carry weight without ceremony.

The man asleep down the hall

I want to say one thing about him before we get to the assignment, because it matters and it is easily missed.

The reason the ceremonial language will not stick to him is that ceremonial language does not stick to anybody. It is not that he has fallen short of it. It would not stick to a saint.

Nobody is the person those sentences describe. That is not a failure of the man. That is what happens when you put a Tuesday next to a liturgy.

You are not looking at somebody who failed to live up to a wedding service, and the words have never once been a description of a person. Numbers 23:19 rests everything on the speaking rather than on the excellence of anybody involved, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman look at a sleeping man without measuring him.

So when you go and do this, do not do it about him. Do it about what you said.