The One Who Knows

Emiliano noticed it on a Tuesday and he has not been able to stop noticing it since.

There were about nine people in the room. Somebody was describing a situation, and Emiliano had something about it, and he waited for the right moment and said it, carefully and without drama, the way he always does.

And the room did what the room always does. It went slightly quiet and then somebody said that is exactly it, and two people looked at him.

And in that half second, Emiliano felt something arrive in his chest that he recognized, because he has felt it before, in a completely different context, when he used to be good at his job and people noticed.

He went home and could not settle.

Because the thing itself was real. He is fairly sure of that. What he is no longer sure about is what he wanted when he said it, and specifically whether he had been waiting for the right moment or for the best moment.

He is fifty-one. He has been carrying this faculty since he was about thirty and has been careful with it for twenty years, and it has genuinely helped people, and he can name four of them.

And now there is this, which he cannot un-notice, and which has made him wary of opening his mouth at all for about two months.

You may know that half second.

Maybe you have also caught yourself. Maybe there was a room, and a small silence, and something in your chest that you recognized from an entirely different part of your life.

The two verbs

There is a sentence in 1 Corinthians that is short enough to memorize and precise enough to use, and it does not confiscate anything.

Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.1 Corinthians 8:1

Two verbs, and both are physical.

Puffeth up is inflation. Air. A thing getting bigger without getting stronger, and the thing getting bigger in that verse is the person who knows.

Edifieth is building. Bricks. Somebody else being more solid than they were before you spoke.

And notice what Paul does not do. He does not say knowledge is bad. He does not tell the Corinthians to stop knowing things, and in the same chapter he actually agrees with them on the facts. He is not correcting their information; he is naming the effect their information is having.

Which means the question in front of you is not whether the thing you said on Tuesday was true. It probably was. The question is whether the room was more solid afterwards, or whether you were.

And what you were given is still yours and nothing here takes it. The written word leaves the knowledge in place and addresses only its effect, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my paragraph who makes that reach a man who has been wary of his own mouth for two months.

And you are not disqualified by having felt it. The word says charity is not puffed up, which locates the correction in what stands beside the knowing, and the Spirit bears witness with your spirit rather than removing a faculty.

The right moment or the best moment

Now let me look at your own question, because it is a good one and better than most people manage about themselves.

You asked whether you were waiting for the right moment or the best moment.

Those are genuinely different and they are almost impossible to tell apart from inside, because they often look identical. The right moment is when the person can receive it. The best moment is when the room can appreciate it.

Here is the only reliable test I know, and it is not introspection, because introspection at this depth is unreliable and you have already found that out.

It is: would you have said it to that person alone, later, with nobody there?

If yes, then the timing was probably about them. If the thought of saying it privately makes it feel somehow less worth saying, that is worth knowing, and it is not a catastrophe and it does not make you a fraud. It makes you a man who has found a real thing in himself two months ago rather than in twenty years.

And you are able to test this without trusting your own introspection. The word says by their fruits ye shall know them, which puts the test in what happens rather than in what a person feels about themselves, and the Spirit is the one who makes an outward test kinder than an inward one.

And nothing about you is under review for a half second in a room. The word says there is now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, and the Spirit supplies that to a man who went home and could not settle.

Two months of not speaking is not the answer

One more thing, because I think the wariness has gone too far and is doing its own damage.

You have stopped opening your mouth. That is not humility; it is a man who cannot trust his own motives choosing zero because zero cannot be misused.

And zero has costs. There have been rooms in the last two months, and things in you, and people who did not get something because you were busy auditing yourself.

The answer to am I doing this for the room is not silence. It is a change of setting: the same thing, said to one person, later, where there is no room to be impressed and nothing to be gained.

That is where shown to nobody today comes in. It is not a rule against ever speaking. It is a delay that strips out the audience, and a thing that survives the delay is almost always the real one.

And what you carry is for building somebody rather than for the room. The word puts edifying in the other person and inflation in the speaker, and the Spirit is the one who aims a thing that has no aim of its own.