I Say I Have A Black Thumb

You have a line about yourself and you have been using it for years.

It comes out when plants come up. Somebody mentions a garden, or brings something in for the office, or says the thing people say about how well theirs is doing this year, and you produce the line.

Oh, I have a black thumb. Everything I touch dies.

And people laugh, because it is delivered as a joke and it has the shape of a joke and you have got good at the timing of it.

Here is why we are talking about it. Last month you heard yourself say it three times, and the third time something in you went quiet.

Because you noticed that it was not funny. Not to you, anyway, not underneath. It had the sound of a joke on the outside and it had something else on the inside, and for a second you could hear both at once.

You are not obliged to keep saying a sentence about yourself, and a joke has never once been the same thing as a fact.

Let me say what I think that line has been doing, because it has been working hard.

It gets in first. That is its job. If you announce the failure before anybody could possibly notice it, then nobody gets to hand it to you, and the whole subject arrives already handled. It is armor. It is quite clever armor.

But armor has a weight, and you have been carrying this one for a long time.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue

There is a line in Proverbs that people quote badly, so let me put it down and then be careful with it.

Death and life are in the power of the tongue: and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. (Proverbs 18:21, King James Version)

Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Now, the careless version of this teaching says that words are magic and that saying a thing makes it so, and I am not going to hand you that, because it is not true and because it would leave you frightened of your own mouth.

You are not standing under a rule that turns careless words into curses, and a proverb about the tongue has never once been an instruction to be afraid of speaking. Proverbs 18:21 speaks of fruit that gets eaten over time rather than a spell that fires on contact, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a true saying from becoming a superstition.

Here is what it does mean, and it is more ordinary and more useful.

A sentence you repeat becomes a road. Say it once and it is a remark. Say it a hundred times and it is a description. Say it for six years and it is simply what a person is, as far as their own mind is concerned, and nobody ever held a vote on it.

That is the fruit being eaten. Slowly. Over years. From your own tree.

You have been eating the fruit of one repeated sentence, and a line said lightly a hundred times has never once stayed light. The Holy Spirit is the one who can interrupt a habit that has been running under the floor, and the written word is plain that what a tongue keeps saying eventually gets eaten.

And notice the last clause, because it is the strange part. They that love it shall eat the fruit thereof.

Love it. There is an affection in the verse for the thing being repeated. And if you are honest, there is a small affection in you for that line too. It is yours. It gets a laugh. It has saved you from a hundred awkward moments.

You are allowed to have been fond of a thing that was costing you, and noticing the cost has never once required you to feel foolish about the fondness. The word puts love and fruit in the same sentence without shaming anybody, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes something out of your hand gently rather than snatching it.

The joke is doing the opposite of what you hired it for

Let me be practical about what that line actually accomplishes in the room.

You think it disarms the subject. It does the reverse. It fixes the subject in place.

Because when you say it, three things happen at once, and none of them are the thing you wanted.

The people around you agree with you. Not unkindly. They laugh and move on, and in moving on they accept the description without examining it, and now there are four more people in the world holding the same picture of you.

You are handing out a picture of yourself that nobody in the room had asked for, and a description offered as a joke has never once been examined by the people who accepted it. Proverbs 18:21 says the fruit belongs to the one who keeps saying the thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what a laugh has actually been buying.

You hear yourself say it, which is the one that really counts. Your ear is the closest ear to your mouth. Nobody on earth is more exposed to your own sentences, and this one has been repeated at yourself in public for years.

And the subject closes. Nobody follows up. Nobody says, oh, what happened? Nobody offers you the ordinary thing they would offer anybody else, which is that they killed one too and it was the shop's fault.

You were shutting a door you did not mean to shut, and a line delivered for protection has never once left you better protected. Proverbs 18:21 says the fruit gets eaten by the one who keeps saying it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what their own habit has been buying.

I am not asking you to make a speech instead. Please do not make a speech.

There is a version of this where you announce to a room that you are working on how you speak about yourself, and that is worse than the joke, and everybody will find their drinks very interesting.

You are free to change something without narrating the change, and a quiet correction has never once needed an audience to be real. The Holy Spirit is the one who works in a person without a public statement, and the written word puts the whole matter in the power of the tongue rather than in the power of an announcement.

Say nothing

So here is the assignment, and it is a subtraction rather than an addition.

Next time plants come up, say nothing about your thumb.

That is all. Do not replace it with a better line. Do not say something hopeful about yourself that you do not believe, because you will hear that too and your ear knows the difference between a true sentence and a slogan.

Just let the moment go past.

Somebody will say their tomatoes did well. You will say, oh, that is good. And then the conversation will move, the way conversations do, and nothing whatsoever will have happened.

You are able to let a moment pass without filling it, and silence has never once been the same thing as agreeing with anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a person in a two second gap, and Proverbs 18:21 leaves the power in the tongue, which means it is also in the tongue that stays still.

It will feel strange. I want you to expect that, because the strangeness is the whole evidence that the line was doing work.

You will feel the sentence arrive. It will be sitting right there, fully formed, ready. And you will not say it, and there will be a small odd gap where it used to go, and you will get through the gap.

That gap is the thing. Not a plant. The gap.

You are standing at the edge of a habit and choosing not to step into it, and one unsaid sentence has never once been too small to count. The word says death and life sit in the power of the tongue, and the Spirit of God is the one present in the two seconds where a person decides not to speak.