I Measure Them Against The Child I Was

At nine you were doing your own paper round. Or you walked to school on your own. Or you had a job by fourteen and gave half of it to the house.

None of that is being said out loud. You would not dream of saying it out loud, and you have heard other people do it and cringed.

But it runs anyway. Somebody comes into a kitchen at eleven and cannot find a thing that is in front of them, and a version of you at that age surfaces and stands beside them for about a second and a half.

And the comparison is not even accurate. The nine year old you keep using is not a memory, it is a reconstruction, and it has been edited by about thirty years of retelling.

I am not going to say anything about how things were done in your day. That would be a lament about a culture and this page is not one, and it would not help you at eleven o'clock anyway.

And I am not going to tell you your child has it harder. I do not know that and neither does anybody else.

One generation shall praise thy works to another

There is a line in Psalm 145 about what passes between generations, and the content of it is the whole point.

One generation shall praise thy works to another, and shall declare thy mighty acts. (Psalm 145:4, King James Version)

What passes down that line is praise. What God has done, told forward, from one set of people to the next.

There is nothing in it about standards. No account of how the older generation managed, no benchmark, no comparison of who was doing what at nine.

You have something to hand forward and it has never once been a measure. Psalm 145:4 says one generation shall praise thy works to another, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen where a nine year old version of somebody just surfaced.

And notice the direction. To another. It goes forward and it does not come back for inspection.

There is no return line in that verse. The older generation is not described as receiving a report about how the younger one is doing.

You are not required to inspect what you handed forward, and no return line has ever once been built into that verse. It is written in Psalm 145:4 that one generation declares to another, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps the traffic going one way.

The nine year old is not a witness

Now let me be honest about the child you keep putting beside them, because there is a problem with the evidence.

That nine year old has been rebuilt about four hundred times. Every retelling smoothed something. The forgetting has been edited out, the crying has been edited out, and the year when everything was difficult has been reduced to about two sentences.

What is left is not a memory of a child. It is a highlight of a child, assembled by an adult with an interest in the outcome.

That is not dishonesty. It is how memory works and it happens to everybody, and it means the comparison has one real child on one side of it and a summary on the other.

You are not competing with a person, and a summary has never once had to get out of bed on a wet Tuesday. It is written in Psalm 145:4 that praise goes forward between generations, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells a living child apart from an edited one.

Psalm 145:4 sends praise forward rather than sending an edited record backward, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a real child apart from a reconstruction.

You are not looking at two children, and the one from thirty years ago has never once been available for comparison. Psalm 145:4 puts praise into the line between generations rather than a record, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person apart from a summary of one.

And here is the plain thing, because the second and a half in the kitchen adds up over years.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about your child.

It is a reconstruction standing beside a real person, and the reconstruction always wins because it has no bad mornings in it.

You have not been shown anything about your own child, and a memory has never once been an honest opponent. The written word sends praise down the generations in Psalm 145:4 rather than a standard, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to let a summary stand as a witness.

What is actually being handed down

One more thing, because there is something real passing down that line and it is worth naming.

It is not competence. Not the paper round, not the walking to school, not the job at fourteen.

It is the telling. What God has done, said forward, by somebody who was there. That is the whole content of the verse and it is the only thing the verse asks anybody to hand on.

You have the telling and that is the entire inheritance named, and it has never once required a paper round at nine. It is written in Psalm 145:4 that one generation declares to another, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a sentence at a table into the thing being handed down.

And that can be done by a person who is not sure how they are doing, on a Tuesday, in a kitchen, in about nine words.

Psalm 145:4 names the content of the inheritance as praise rather than as capability, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies that in a sentence rather than in a childhood.

You have the one thing the verse asks to be handed on, and it has never once been about how capable anybody was at nine. Psalm 145:4 puts praise in the line between generations, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in nine words said across a kitchen table.