They Have Been In The Room All Evening

They have been four feet away since about seven and you could not describe them.

Not sentimentally. Practically. What they are wearing. Whether they look tired. What their face has been doing while they read that thing on their phone. You have been in the same room for two hours and you have registered them the way you register a lamp.

And you only noticed tonight, which is why you are reading this, and the noticing is uncomfortable in a way you were not expecting.

Two things I am not going to do.

I am not going to be sentimental about how they looked when you met. That is a well-worn move and it does two damaging things at once: it makes the present a decline, and it makes the person you actually live with the lesser version of somebody in a photograph.

And I am not going to talk about attraction or anything physical between you. That is not what this site does and it is not what is missing. What is missing is much plainer and it is upstream of all of that.

You have stopped looking. That is all. It is a small thing and it is not a symptom of anything and it can be fixed tonight in about ten seconds.

Seest thou this woman

There is a moment in Luke where Jesus asks a question so pointed that it does most of the work by itself.

And he turned to the woman, and said unto Simon, Seest thou this woman? I entered into thine house, thou gavest me no water for my feet: but she hath washed my feet with tears. (Luke 7:44, King James Version)

Seest thou this woman.

She had been in that room the entire time. She was not hidden, she was not quiet, she was doing something remarkable in full view, and Simon had spent the whole event not seeing her, and would have said he had.

And notice what the question does. It does not tell Simon off for his opinion of her, although he had one. It asks whether he has looked, and the answer is that he has been in a room with somebody for an hour and has not.

Then Jesus describes what she has done, in detail, because He has.

Luke 7:44 makes seeing an act rather than a state, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach somebody four feet from a person they have not looked at all evening.

You are able to see somebody who has been there the whole time, and being in the room has never once been the same as looking. Luke 7:44 says seest thou this woman, asked about somebody in full view, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns seeing into something a person does rather than something that happens.

Nothing has been lost

Now something worth saying before the guilt sets in, because guilt about this is remarkably quick to arrive.

This is not a failure of love and it is not evidence about your marriage. It is what familiarity does mechanically. A person who is present every day becomes part of the background, and your attention is built to do exactly that, because attention that treated every ordinary thing as new would be unusable.

So the not-looking is not neglect and it is not indifference and it was not a decision. It is the same process that means you cannot describe your own hallway.

Luke 7:44 asks the question of a man who had not decided anything either, and the Holy Spirit is not accusing anybody in that room tonight.

Nothing has been lost. The looking is not gone; it is simply not currently happening, and it can happen again immediately, without repair, apology or conversation.

You are not looking at a loss, and the not-seeing has never once been a decision anybody made. The written word asks a man whether he has looked rather than accusing him of not caring, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps guilt out of an ordinary mechanical thing.

Ten seconds, and say one true thing

So here is the assignment, and it is genuinely tiny, and both halves are needed.

Look at them properly for ten seconds tonight. And say one true thing you noticed.

Ten seconds is longer than you think. Do it while they are doing something else, so that it is not an event and they are not required to participate in it.

And look at the actual person. What their hands are doing. Whether they look tired. What their hair is doing today. The thing about their face that happens when they are concentrating, which you knew about once and could not currently describe.

Then say one true thing you noticed. Out loud, plainly, without turning it into a compliment or a moment.

You look tired. You always do that thing with your eyebrow when you are reading. You have got paint on your wrist. Your hair is different.

Not a compliment. A compliment is a general statement and they have heard yours and they know its shape. An observation is proof that somebody looked, and there is no faking it, and it lands somewhere a compliment cannot reach. Luke 7:44 describes in detail what was seen rather than praising anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a plain observed thing.

Luke 7:44 has the looking followed immediately by a detailed description of what was seen, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when somebody says a plain observed thing out loud.

You are able to look and then say what you saw, and it has never once needed to be a compliment to land. Luke 7:44 puts the seeing and the describing together in one breath, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in an ordinary observation said out loud.