The Joke I Make So Nobody Gets Close

It is very good. That is what makes it hard to see.

He is genuinely funny. Not in a tiresome way, not a man who performs, and there are four people in his life who would tell you that an evening is better when he is at it. The timing is real and it took years and it is one of the better things about him.

And it arrives, every single time, at the exact moment somebody is about to ask him something.

There is a look people get. A slight settling. A change in the way they are holding their glass, and a small in-breath, and then a first word that is almost always his name, said differently. So, Ryan.

And he is off. Something about the traffic on the way over, or the state of the sofa, or an entirely fabricated but very plausible anecdote about a man in a hardware shop, and the room turns, and everybody is laughing, and the person who was about to ask lets their breath out and laughs too, and the moment goes.

Four-tenths of a second, same as anything.

He knows he does it. He has known since a specific evening about six years ago, when his oldest friend, who is not a subtle man, put his glass down and said, "You did it again," and did not explain and did not need to.

He is forty. Divorced, eight years, amicably enough. His daughter is thirteen and funny in exactly the same way, which delights him and occasionally frightens him.

And here is the thing he has never said to anybody, including the oldest friend: it is not that he does not want to be asked. It is that the joke arrives before he has established whether he wants to be asked, and by the time the question is dead, he is relieved, and the relief is the part he cannot get past.

Because a man who is relieved is a man who wanted the door shut.

The door was already open somewhere else

I want to say something about the relief, because I think you have been reading it as evidence of your character and it is not.

Relief is what you feel when a load comes off. It does not tell you whether the load was one you should have been carrying. A man who has spent forty years managing his own interior alone will feel relief when a conversation turns, and the relief is a report on how heavy it is in there, not a verdict on whether he wants company.

So put that down. It is not proof that you prefer to be alone. It is proof that being asked costs you something, which is a different sentence entirely and a much fairer one.

Now let me take you to the one door where the joke has never been needed and has never worked.

Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.Hebrews 4:16

Boldly. The word in that letter is the word for the freedom a citizen had to speak plainly in public. It is not the boldness of a man who has decided to risk something. It is the freedom of somebody with the standing to say what he means in a room where he belongs.

And look at what the verse assumes about you before it invites you anywhere: it assumes there is a time of need, and that you have one, and that you will arrive with it rather than despite it.

You are invited to come boldly, with the need in your hands, and nothing has to be funny first, and that is not my encouragement to a man with a reflex, it is what is written, and the Holy Spirit is the reason it is landing on the relief rather than in your considerable general knowledge.

Now let me say something about six years ago, because your friend did you a service and I do not think you have ever counted it as one.

He put his glass down and said, "You did it again." You have been known, accurately, by at least one man, for six years, and you did not lose him over it, and he has kept turning up, and Scripture says the throne we come to is a throne of grace and the Spirit of God is the one who has kept that friendship in the room.

I want to touch your daughter, since you brought her up in your own account.

She is funny in exactly the same way and it delights you and it frightens you. You are not handing down a wall. The word says the invitation is to come boldly, and the Spirit is the one who makes a man able to, and a thirteen-year-old with good timing is a thirteen-year-old with good timing.

What she will learn from you is not the joke. It is what she sees her father do when somebody says his name differently and puts their glass down.

And here is the last of it. You are welcome at that throne without a single line prepared. The word calls it a throne of grace and it puts the coming in the imperative, which means somebody who has the authority to say so has already told you to come. The joke is a good door. It has never been a wall, except in one place, and that is the place where the door was already standing open. The Holy Spirit is the one who has kept a friend who named it accurately still turning up six years later.