and you must teach them to your children and speak of them as you sit in your house, as you walk along the road, as you lie down, and as you get up.
Deuteronomy 6:7 (NET)
Talk at the Plainest Hours
A man wheels his mother’s upright into the tuning shop and says it hasn’t been played since she moved out. He takes the chair by the window to wait. The tuner comes out from the back, finds the fallboard with two fingers, and starts at the bass end.
He’s most of the way blind and does the whole job by ear. Strike the key, strike the fork, listen to the beat between them slow down and quit, move the pin a hair. One note can take him two minutes.
Moses is telling Israel what to do with the commandments once they have them, and the people he puts in charge of it are parents. The hours he names for the work are sitting at home, walking along the road, lying down, getting up.
A family already has those four hours. Sitting down at home doesn’t get scheduled, and neither does the walk to wherever everyone is going, or the last stretch before sleep, or the first one after. They come around whether the day went well or not, and they’re the least presentable hours a house has. Getting up is nobody’s finest moment, and lying down happens once the day has finished with a family.
God asks for those hours, and he asks for talking in them. The commandments go into the children in the middle of an ordinary week, in the stretches when a house has given up on appearances and is just a house with people in it.
The man by the window checks his phone, says he’ll come back for it Friday, and leaves. Late in the afternoon the tuner reaches the top of the scale and stops. He closes the lid, and in all that time nothing has been said in that shop at all.
A Prayer to Remember
The people in my house have heard me talk about everything but you. I’ve had the openings. Sitting down to eat, the ten minutes before the lights go out, and I’ve filled both with something safer, every time. You gave me those hours and I’ve spent them on nothing. Don’t let me wait for an easier one to come around.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
