I Said Thank You Out Loud

You said thank you out loud in your own yard.

Not planned. You were standing there looking at it, and something in you went up, and the words came out at ordinary speaking volume.

And then, within about two seconds, you felt ridiculous.

And you have been quietly examining that ever since, which is the actual subject of this article. Not the thanking. The two seconds afterward.

You are not being excessive, and thanks said out loud over a small thing has never once been out of proportion to what it was for.

Let me separate two things that have been running together in your head.

The first is whether it was right to be thankful. And you have no real doubts about that. Something good happened, you are a man who believes God is behind good things, and thanks is the ordinary response.

The second is the volume and the location. Out loud, in a yard, over a seedling, with the neighbors potentially about.

It is the second one that produced the two seconds, and you have been treating the embarrassment as though it were a judgment on the first.

With a loud voice glorified God

There is a moment in Luke where one man out of ten comes back, and the details the text preserves are the interesting part.

And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. (Luke 17:15 and 16, King James Version)

With a loud voice glorified God.

Now, that detail did not have to be in there. The text could have said he gave thanks. It says with a loud voice, which means somebody thought the volume was worth recording.

You are looking at a gospel that kept the volume in the account, and a loud thanks has never once been edited down by anybody telling that story. Luke 17:15 preserves the loud voice as part of what happened, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has been embarrassed about speaking at a normal volume in his own yard.

And notice the rest of the scene, because it is not a dignified one.

He turns back, which means he separates from the other nine and goes the wrong way down a road. He shouts. Then he falls on his face. And he is a Samaritan, which the text mentions specifically, meaning he was the one with the least standing to be doing any of it.

Nothing about that is restrained and nothing about it is corrected.

You are looking at a man doing something conspicuous and alone, and an unrestrained thanks has never once been trimmed back in that passage by anybody present. The Holy Spirit is the one who kept the whole scene in, and the written word records the turning back and the shouting and the falling without one word of comment about proportion.

And then the question Jesus asks afterward, which is the sharpest bit. Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine?

The nine are not praised for their restraint. They are asked after. The absence of the loud ones is what gets noticed.

You are the one who came back, and the man who said it out loud has never once been the one that passage is concerned about. The Spirit of God is the one asking where the nine are, and the word leaves the loud man commended and the quiet ones missing.

The two seconds are learned

Let me be practical about the embarrassment, because I think it can be identified rather than argued with.

Nobody heard you.

That is worth establishing first. There was, on the evidence, no audience. The two seconds were not produced by anybody's reaction, because there was no reaction, because nobody was there.

Which means the embarrassment is internal and pre-loaded. It arrived on schedule, from you, in response to nothing.

You were reacting to an audience that has never once been present in that yard, and an embarrassment with nobody in the room has never been a response to anything real. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man where a feeling is actually coming from, and Luke 17:16 records a man behaving conspicuously with no correction from anybody watching.

And here is where I think it comes from, offered rather than insisted on.

Speaking out loud when alone is one of the small things men learn to suppress, and it gets suppressed hardest where it is most sincere. A man will happily swear out loud alone in a yard. He will not say thank you out loud alone in a yard.

That is not a rule about volume. It is a rule about sincerity, and it is worth noticing that it only fires in one direction.

You are running a rule that only ever fires on the sincere things, and a suppression that operates in one direction has never once been about proportion. The Spirit of God is the one who unlocks what a man has learned to hold back, and the written word puts the loud voice in the account and leaves it there.

Say it again, and do not lower your voice

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the whole of it.

Say it again, out loud, in the same place, and do not lower your voice.

Same yard, same pot, roughly the same words. And at the same volume you used the first time, which was ordinary speaking volume, not a whisper.

You are able to do a thing a second time on purpose, and a repeated thanks has never once been a lesser thanks than the one that arrived by surprise. Luke 17:16 has a man doing something conspicuous deliberately, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there while a man says it again at full volume.

Here is why the volume is the instruction rather than the words.

Because the temptation will be to say it again, quietly, and call that obedience. And a quiet version would let the rule stand. The rule says sincere things get said under your breath, and whispering it agrees with that.

Ordinary volume is the thing being practiced. Not shouting. Just not lowering.

You are able to say a sincere thing at the volume you would use for anything else, and an ordinary voice has never once been an excessive voice. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the choosing not to drop it, and the word specifically records that the man who came back did it with a loud voice.

And when the two seconds arrive afterward, and they will, notice them and do nothing about them. Do not argue and do not agree. Just let them pass while you stand there.