The Little Foxes

Nothing in your house is going to be taken by a wolf.

I know that is not what you expect to read in a category about standing watch. But look at what happens to the men around you. Almost none of them lose their marriage to a dramatic betrayal or their kids to a cult. They lose them to a long series of small things that never once looked like the moment.

There is a verse for that, and it is in the least likely book in the Bible.

Catch the little ones

"Catch the foxes for us, The little foxes that are ruining the vineyards, While our vineyards are in blossom." (Song of Solomon 2:15)

Three details, and every one of them matters.

Little foxes. Not a bear, not a boar. Something small enough that you would not raise an alarm about it, and something quick.

Ruining the vineyards. That is the strong word in the sentence, and it is a participle, so it is ongoing. Not ruined. Ruining, right now, while you read. The animal is small and the damage runs far past its size. A fox is after the grapes, and when he is too small to reach them he works the stem until the vine comes down, so the grower does not lose a season's fruit. He loses the vine.

While our vineyards are in blossom. This is the part that stops me. The damage happens during the good stretch. Not in the drought. In bloom, when everything looks its best and nobody is inspecting anything.

The context is a marriage

This line sits in the middle of a love song, in a passage where two people are delighting in each other. Who says it is not certain. It reads like the woman, though some take it as the man and some as a line of a vintners' song dropped into the poem. What is certain is where it sits. In the good season, between two people who are enjoying each other.

And the Song never tells you what the foxes are. It hands you the picture and walks off. So I am extending it, and here is the direction it runs. A marriage that is going well is exactly where the small things get ignored, because who wants to raise a minor issue in a good season. You let it go. It is not worth a conversation. You are getting along.

And the small thing goes into the roots.

Think about what these are. The joke at her expense that got a laugh at the table, so it became a bit. The subject the two of you have agreed not to bring up, and neither of you ever agreed to it out loud. The way you have started telling her about your day in headlines because the full version takes too long. The fact that you have not asked her a question you did not already know the answer to in about four months.

None of those is a crisis. Every one of them is a fox.

Why small is harder than big

A big threat announces itself and organizes you. Something serious happens and a man rises to it, cancels things, gets help, goes to war. Men are good at this.

A small threat gives you nothing to rise to. There is no moment. There is no day you could point at. And the cost of addressing it always feels higher than the cost of leaving it, because addressing it means an awkward conversation right now and leaving it means nothing right now.

That math is correct every single time you run it, and it is wrong over ten years.

This is the shape of every wall that ever came down without a siege. Nobody knocks it down. It goes because a few stones came loose and nobody was assigned to that section.

The foxes in a man himself

Same principle, closer to home.

Nobody wakes up and decides to become a man who does not pray. It goes one skipped morning at a time, in a good season, when everything is fine and he does not feel the need.

Nobody decides to start drinking too much. He decides that a hard week earns a second one, and then a normal week does.

Nobody chooses to stop being close to his oldest friends. He declines three invitations for reasonable reasons and then stops being invited, which he does not notice for a year.

Every one of those is small, defensible, and in bloom. That is what makes them foxes rather than problems. A problem gets solved. A fox gets tolerated.

Catching one

The verb is catch, and it is worth noticing that it is plural and addressed to somebody. Catch them for us. This is not a man alone with a resolution. It is a request made out loud to another person.

So the method is not vigilance. You cannot out-notice your own blind spots, which is the definition of a blind spot.

The method is naming one small thing out loud, early, to the person it involves, while the season is still good.

That is the whole hard part. Raising something small feels absurdly out of proportion. You will feel like you are making a thing out of nothing. Say it anyway, and say it small, because a small thing said at small size costs almost nothing, and the same thing said in year six costs a weekend.

I have never met a man who regretted the small conversation. I have met a lot of men doing the large one.

The vineyard is not yours

Here is where a post like this could turn into a heavy load, so let me put the weight where it belongs.

Isaiah has a song about a vineyard. God dug it all around, cleared its stones, planted it with the choicest vine, built a tower in the middle of it and hewed out a wine vat, and then He expected good grapes and got worthless ones (Isaiah 5:1-2). The vineyard in Scripture is His before it is anybody's.

And Jesus takes that same picture and puts Himself inside it. He says He is the vine and His Father is the vinedresser, and that a branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine (John 15:1, 15:4).

So you are not the owner out here trying to defend a plot with your own alertness. You are on ground that belongs to Someone who has never once been unaware of what is in it. The foxes are real and catching them is your job. The life in the vine is not something you generate, and the reason your house has anything green in it at all is not your vigilance.

That takes the panic out of this without taking the assignment away.

Name one, this week

Pick the smallest thing you have been letting go.

Not the big one. You know the big one and you are not going to touch it tonight. Pick the little one. The thing you noticed twice and decided was not worth mentioning.

Say it to the person involved this week, in one sentence, with no build-up and no case attached. I noticed this and I wanted to say it while it is small.

They will probably say it is not a big deal. That is fine. That is the point. You are not catching a wolf.

You are walking your own rows in a good year, which is the only time anybody has ever caught a fox.