I Found Out What It Costs By Getting The Bill

The septic was the first one and that was in April.

Then the thing with the gutters, which was not much on its own but which came with a sentence from the man on the ladder about what happens if you leave it, and that sentence cost you more than the gutters did because you have thought about it ever since.

Then the well pump in August.

Three lessons, three invoices, and the same shape every time. You did not know a thing. The thing then happened. The bill arrived and taught you what you had not known, at a price, after it was too late to use the information.

That is the whole of your first year of owning, and I would guess it is close to the whole of your first year of a lot of things, but you are not looking for perspective and I am not offering any.

What I want to look at is the sentence that has been forming in you since about the middle of August.

It goes something like: I am being taught something here.

Not by anybody. There is no teacher in the sentence, which is what makes it so difficult to get hold of and so easy to keep believing.

Learning and being taught

Let me separate two things, because they arrive looking identical and they are not the same at all.

Learning is what happened. You did not know about the gutters. Now you do. The mechanism was expensive and unpleasant and it worked, and at the end of it there is a man who knows more about his own property than he did in March.

Being taught is a claim about intent. It says somebody arranged the curriculum. It says the septic was a lesson rather than a septic, chosen, scheduled, and sent.

Those two feel the same from the inside and they are entirely different propositions, and only one of them has any evidence behind it.

You have been learning and not being schooled, and a hard year has never once needed a teacher behind it to have taught you something. The Holy Spirit is the one who is out in the yard with a man looking at a well head, and it is written in Proverbs 18 that he that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him.

And I want to name what the being taught reading actually does, because it does not stay abstract.

If a year was curriculum, then the next year is also curriculum, and every future expense becomes a further lesson, which turns the whole of owning this place into a course with an unknown end and a teacher whose intentions have to be guessed at.

You have been guessing at intentions rather than reading a year, and one hard twelve months has never once told anybody what God thinks of them. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps the matter open instead of closing it against a man, and it is written in Proverbs 18 that answering a matter before hearing it is folly.

That is a much heavier thing to carry than a well pump.

You have been enrolled in a course that nobody set, and three invoices in one year have never once added up to a syllabus. Proverbs 18 warns against answering a matter before hearing the whole of it, and the Spirit of God is the one who put that warning in the book for men in a hurry to understand.

He that answereth a matter

Here is the verse, and it applies to you in a way you will not expect.

He that answereth a matter before he heareth it, it is folly and shame unto him. (Proverbs 18:13, King James Version)

That is usually read as a proverb about listening to people, and it is that.

You have been handed a warning that fits you exactly, and a proverb about hearing a matter out has never once been aimed only at conversations. Proverbs 18 calls the early answer folly without naming the subject, and the Holy Spirit is the one who left it open enough to reach a man reading his own year.

But look at the shape of the error it names. Somebody arrives at a conclusion before the whole matter has been laid out. He has part of the information and he produces a verdict, and the proverb calls that folly, and it calls it shame.

Now put your sentence in there. I am being taught something here.

That is a verdict on a year, delivered in August, with one year of evidence, about the intentions of God toward a man and his house.

You have answered a matter early, and one year of a house has never once been enough of a hearing to render that verdict on. The Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a man's reading of his own year, and the written word warns against a conclusion reached before the whole thing has been heard.

And there is a mercy in that verse that is easy to miss.

If you have answered early, then the matter is still open. Nothing is settled. The reading you arrived at in August is not a finding, it is a first impression formed under fire, and a first impression can be set down.

You are permitted to set down a verdict you reached in August, and a conclusion formed in the middle of a hard year has never once been binding on you. Proverbs 18 calls the early answer folly and leaves the matter itself undecided, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps it open.