The jacket is the news

"I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. Because he inclined his ear to me, therefore I will call on him as long as I live." — Psalm 116:1-2

I wore a jacket to the mailbox this morning and that is the whole news from here.

It was not cold. It was that first morning where standing outside in shirtsleeves would have been a decision instead of a default, and I did not feel like making a decision at seven in the morning, so I took the barn jacket off the hook by the back door and put it on and went down the driveway and got the mail and came back. Two circulars and a bill. But I wore a jacket, and I have not worn a jacket since May, and the jacket is the news.

Dan called at seven-fifteen. He always calls at seven-fifteen on Tuesdays, and I have never asked him why that time, and I think it is because it is after Beth leaves and before he starts. There is a fifteen-minute window in my son's morning that belongs to me and he has never once mentioned it and neither have I.

He said the birthday went fine. He said Emma had sent Becca a picture of herself with a cake and sixteen candles and looking mortified about the candles, which is the correct way for a sixteen-year-old to look about candles. He asked whether I had gotten hold of Hannah. I said I had left a message. He said, good, and did not say anything else about it, which is Dan's way of being careful with me.

Then he told me his knee has been bothering him and he does not want to go to the doctor about it, and I said Daniel, and he laughed, because he knows what Daniel means when I say it in that particular way. He said he would think about it. He will not think about it. But he heard me say it, and there are things you say to your children not because they will act on them but because the child needs to know the saying is still available.

The psalm says he inclined his ear. That is a physical picture. Somebody leaning down toward a small voice. Not standing there receiving the report from a height. Leaning in, the way you lean toward a child at a table when the room is loud.

Seven-fifteen on a Tuesday is somebody leaning in.

The jacket is back on the hook. I will need it tomorrow.

Lord, thank you for the fifteen minutes.