Smooth Words

My dear girls,

I want to tell you about a photograph, a boat, a garden, and a king’s house. Somewhere in the middle of them you are going to meet yourself. That is, of course, the point.

The photograph

When the class photograph comes home, whose face do you look for first?

Of course you do. So do I. So does every person who has ever held a photograph, all the way back to the first one. Nobody taught us this. It was there before you could talk.

That little reflex is the oldest thing about you. Ever since Adam, every human heart has been bent inward, like a hook, curving back toward itself. What about me? How did I look? Who noticed? Whose piece is bigger? She did it first, so I may do it back. And if I cannot have it, then neither must she. You do not have to be exceptionally selfish to feel it pulling. You only have to be awake.

Mark 8:35But here is the strange and wonderful thing: you were not built to live bent. Think of the happiest hours of your whole life. I can name some of them. The game that ran until dark. The song you were inside of. The afternoon with a friend when you laughed until your ribs ached. And notice what those hours have in common: in every one of them, you had forgotten yourself completely. You never once checked how you looked. You were too busy looking out, and you were never more you. The Lord Jesus put it in one sentence that sounds upside down and is actually the right way up: whoever wishes to save her life will lose it, and whoever loses her life for His sake will find it (Mark 8:35). The bent heart grabs and is miserable. The heart that faces outward, toward God first and then toward everyone else at the table, is the only kind that is ever actually happy.

Hold on to both of those. The hook, and the happiness. Everything else I have to tell you follows from them.

The boat

Some day, and I cannot tell you when, a friendship you love is going to go strange. Nothing terrible will have happened. There will be no fight to point to. It will simply stop being easy, and you will lie in bed genuinely puzzled: why is this so unhappy now? How did I get trapped in this?

Here is usually why. Picture two girls in one rowing boat. Somewhere back up the river, without ever saying so, each of them quietly pulled her oars in. Each is now waiting to be rowed. Each is keeping a small count of strokes. Each is sure the other one changed. And the boat sits still in the middle of the river while both of them wonder what went wrong.

No villain. Just two bent hearts in one boat. And the word ordinary must not fool you: the shipped oar and the little count of strokes are your own hook at its quiet work, and they need repenting of, not excusing. The cure begins with your half of it: put your oars back in the water without waiting to see whether she will. That is hard enough, and it is the honest kind of hard.

But there is another thing that gets into friendships, and it is not weather at all. It is poison.

The garden

John 8:44The very first friendship in the world was broken by smooth words. And I want you to notice how the serpent came to Eve, because he did not come as an enemy. He came the way a friend comes: chatty, interested, ever so concerned for her. He asked a thoughtful question. He worried, aloud, that she might be missing out. He never told her to do anything at all. He just talked, warmly, until her own hand did the work, and then he was nowhere to be found. Jesus tells us that lying is that creature’s native language; he is “a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44).

The difference is worth a lifetime. The boat is two bent hearts, and both of them have something to repent of; but it is honest trouble, out in the open where both of you can see it. The poison is something else: lying inside a friendship to get something out of it. The tears that are tools. The silence that is a punishment. The story told with one sentence missing. The warmth turned off like a tap to teach you a lesson. Friendship on this fallen planet is hard enough already; poison is another matter entirely. And it did not stay in the garden.

The king’s house

In the days of King David there was a young prince named Amnon. His story begins: Amnon had a friend, Jonadab. And Scripture adds, “a very shrewd man.”

Amnon wanted something he had no right to want: his beautiful half-sister, Tamar. And it was his friend who showed him how to get her. Lie down, said Jonadab. Pretend to be ill. When your father the king comes, ask for Tamar to cook for you where you can watch. The craft was complete: faked weakness as bait; the king turned errand boy without knowing it; her kindness chosen as the lever, for Jonadab knew a kind girl comes when a sick man calls.

2 Samuel 13:15She came. She cooked. He sent everyone out, and he took by force what love never takes. And then comes the verse I most want you to carry out of this letter and keep for the rest of your life: “the hatred with which he hated her was greater than the love with which he had loved her” (2 Samuel 13:15). That one sentence is the anatomy of every counterfeit that will ever knock on your door. It was never love. It was wanting, wearing love’s coat, and the moment the wanting was fed, off came the coat. He put her out and bolted the door behind her, and she went away weeping, ashes on her head; the kindest person in the story and the one left desolate.

Her brother Absalom found her and took her in. And Absalom said nothing, not one word, good or bad, for two whole years, while his hatred quietly fermented in the dark. Then, when the two years were full, he threw a festival at sheep-shearing time and invited all the king’s sons, Amnon among them. His servants had their orders in advance: watch the head table; wait until Amnon’s heart is merry with wine; and when I give the word, strike. They struck him down in the middle of the feast, among the platters and the music, and the king’s sons scrambled onto their mules and fled. The whisper in the first verse of the chapter ends with a prince bleeding out at a party, a sister ruined, a brother on the run, and a kingdom beginning to crack.

And Jonadab? Jonadab attended the funeral. Clean hands, calm face, correct information. The shrewd friend outlived everyone he advised. Scripture’s word for him is shrewd; keep it in your pocket, because the Lord Jesus is going to use the same word before this letter is done.

1 Samuel 18:41 Samuel 23:16But God, who does not flinch from showing us that house, put another friendship in the very same family so that we would not despair. Jonathan was the crown prince, and David was the shepherd boy who was going to take his throne, and Jonathan knew it. And what did Jonathan do? He took off his own royal robe and put it on David, and his armor, and his sword (1 Samuel 18:4). The crown prince stood in his shirt so that his rival could stand in his robe. He loved David as his own soul, and years later, when David was hunted and exhausted in the wilderness, Jonathan slipped out to find him and “strengthened his hand in God” (1 Samuel 23:16). There is the whole definition of a true friend: he sends you to God stronger than he found you. Jonadab’s cleverness fed his friend’s worst hunger. Jonathan’s love starved his own.

Choose your room

Now, my dears, here is why your father has told you the whole dark, blazing story instead of something safer. Every person in that house was once a child like you. Nobody wakes up as a Jonadab. And you will stand, someday, in every one of those rooms.

Someday a clever friend will lean in close and show you a smooth way to get what you want. That is Jonadab’s room, and you will feel how flattering it is to be the girl with the plan.

Someday somebody will want something from you and will dress the wanting in love’s coat. That is Amnon at the door, and you will have one verse to test him with: real love serves and waits and stays; wanting hates what it has finished with.

Matthew 10:16Someday you will be the kind one whose kindness gets used. Hear me carefully: Tamar did nothing wrong. Her goodness was not the sin; his was, entirely. But that is exactly why the Lord Jesus tells His people to be “shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16): Jonadab’s word, out of the Lord’s own mouth. The sharpness is a blade, and the only question is which master holds it. Jonadab had the serpent’s eye without the dove’s heart. I am asking God to give you both: a heart too clean to play the trick, and an eye too sharp to fall for it.

And someday you will watch someone you love be wronged, and everything in you will want to go quiet and cold and start planning, and that is Absalom’s room, where grief ferments into something worse than the original crime. Do not live there. Speak, in the daylight, to your father and to your Father, and leave the avenging to the Judge who does it justly.

Which leaves Jonathan’s room, where the robe hangs. You do not get to choose whether these moments come. You are choosing, tonight, in a warm kitchen with nothing at stake, who you will be when they do.

The invitation

One last thing, and it is the best thing.

1 John 1:9You will fail at this. The bent heart makes little Jonadabs and little Amnons of all of us; you have already felt the trick whisper to you, some ordinary afternoon, a story improving slightly in the telling, and you will feel it again. When you catch yourself at it, thank God for the sting, because the sting is a living conscience, and it has a door: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins” (1 John 1:9). Confess, be washed, and come back out into the daylight.

Matthew 11:28Matthew 23:37And when you want to know what un-poisoned love looks like, look at how the Lord Himself deals with hearts. He invites: “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). He calls, He appeals, He even weeps over the city that would not have Him: “how often I wanted to gather your children together… and you were unwilling” (Matthew 23:37). What He never does is pick the lock. He does not force a door or slip through a window. Nobody has ever been tricked into the kingdom of God; everyone inside came willingly, joyfully, convinced. And the King they came to gave more than a robe. He laid down His life for His friends, and He calls you that.

So: smooth words only ever make you queen of a country where everyone, including the queen, is a prisoner. You were made for the other country. Keep the dove’s heart. Keep the serpent’s eye. Row your side of the boat. And give the robe away. And when love comes calling one day, listen for the difference between a knock and a key being forced, because now you know it.

All my love, and every scrap of my confidence,

Papa

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Scripture wording targets the NASB 1995; verify against the printed text before sharing, particularly 2 Samuel 13:15, 1 Samuel 18:4, 1 Samuel 23:16, Mark 8:35, Matthew 11:28, and Matthew 23:37.