I Have Run Out Of New Things To Say

Come on. We are going to be late. Have you got your bag.

You have said those in that order roughly four thousand times. You could say them asleep and there is a decent chance you have.

And it is not that they stopped working. They never worked. It is that they stopped being anything at all. They come out of your mouth like a recording of somebody who used to live here.

Somewhere behind that is a worse thought, and it is the one that actually keeps a person awake: that you have run out. That everything you had to give a child in the form of words has been given, and what is left is a set of four phrases and a tone.

I am not going to hand you new things to say. There is no script and if I gave you one you would hear yourself performing it on the second day, and so would they.

And I am not going to tell you to be more intentional with your words. That is a standard, and this is not a place that hands those out.

The tongue gets given in the morning

There is a line in Isaiah about speaking, and the strange thing about it is where the words come from.

The Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakeneth morning by morning, he wakeneth mine ear to hear as the learned. (Isaiah 50:4, King James Version)

Given. Not developed, not stored, not saved up from a better year.

And then the second half tells you when. Morning by morning. Which means it does not carry over, and it also means it does not run out, because a thing issued daily cannot be exhausted by yesterday's spending.

You are given a tongue for this house each morning, and it has never once been drawn from what was left in the tank. Isaiah 50:4 says the Lord GOD hath given me the tongue of the learned and that He wakeneth morning by morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a prophet's line into a kitchen at seven.

Look at who the word is for, as well. A word in season to him that is weary.

Not to the crowd. Not to the interested. To the weary, which on most days in most houses is everybody in the building including the person doing the talking.

You have a word in season for a weary house, and the wornness of your own voice has never disqualified you from carrying it. It is written in Isaiah 50:4 that the word is aimed at the weary, and the Spirit of God is the one who does not require the speaker to be fresh.

What actually wore out

Now here is the thing, because I do not think the words have run out at all.

What wore out is novelty, and novelty was never the ingredient. The measure being used in your head is whether a sentence still feels new to the person saying it, and that measure guarantees a loss, because nothing said four thousand times feels new to anybody.

It has never once felt new to you. It has also never been for you.

The person at the other end of those four phrases is not hearing a recording. They are hearing the sound of the house they live in, and that sound is supposed to be the same, and its sameness is the reassurance rather than the failure.

You are not out of anything, and what ran down was novelty rather than love. Isaiah 50:4 issues the tongue morning by morning rather than storing it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who resupplies a person who thinks the well is empty.

And this needs saying plainly, because the thought underneath is not really about vocabulary. It is a verdict, and it is not a true one.

The state of your sentences is not evidence about who you are. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it does not say anything about how much you love the people you say them to.

You have not become a smaller parent, and a worn sentence has never once been a report on the person saying it. The written word hands the tongue over fresh in Isaiah 50:4 without inspecting yesterday's, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to read tiredness as a character.

Wakeneth mine ear

There is a clause in the middle that most people read past, and it changes the direction of the whole thing.

He wakeneth mine ear to hear.

Before the speaking there is a hearing, and the prophet is not the one who initiates either of them. The ear gets woken. Then the word comes. The order is the whole point, and it is exactly backwards from how a tired parent goes about it, which is to reach inside for something to say.

You cannot reach inside for it. There is nothing in there this week, which you already know, which is why you are reading this.

Isaiah 50:4 does not ask you to generate the word, and the Holy Spirit is the one who wakens an ear before He fills a mouth.

You are not required to produce anything from your own supply, and this has never once been a matter of what you had left. Isaiah 50:4 has the ear wakened first and the tongue given after, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does both of those before the day starts.