I Feel Silly Calling It A Garden

Somebody asked you about your garden and you corrected them.

That is where this starts. They said something friendly and general, and you said, oh, it is not really a garden, it is just a pot on the step.

And then you moved the conversation along quite quickly.

Let me ask what the correction was for, because it is worth looking at.

It was not for accuracy. They were not misinformed and they were not going to turn up expecting an acre. Nobody was going to be disappointed by anything.

You corrected them so that you would not be caught claiming something. You got in first, downgraded it yourself, and made sure nobody could think you thought it was more than it is.

You are allowed to call it a garden, and a word has never once had a minimum size attached to it.

And here is what has actually happened, and it is smaller and sadder than a debate about vocabulary.

You have a thing you love and you have no word for it that you can say out loud without wincing.

That is the real cost. Not the word. The wincing. Because a person who cannot name a thing plainly cannot quite enjoy it plainly either, and the pot on your step has been quietly demoted every time it comes up.

Man looketh on the outward appearance

There is a line in 1 Samuel that arrives at the exact moment somebody is being assessed by size, and it is worth having the scene attached.

But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart. (1 Samuel 16:7, King James Version)

For man looketh on the outward appearance.

Now, the setting. Samuel is looking at a line of brothers and is about to pick the impressive one, and God stops him. And the specific thing named is height of his stature. The size of the person.

You are being told plainly how the assessment gets made and that God does not make it that way, and the size of a thing has never once been what He was reading. 1 Samuel 16:7 names height of stature as the exact thing being disregarded, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a woman with one pot beside a door.

And notice something important about that verse, because it is usually flattened into a general moral.

God does not say the outward appearance is unimportant or unreal. Eliab really was tall. That was a true fact about him. The verse does not deny the measurement, it denies that the measurement is the thing being read.

You are not being asked to pretend your pot is bigger than it is, and an honest measurement has never once been in conflict with what God is actually looking at. The Holy Spirit is the one who leaves a fact standing while removing its authority, and the written word disputes the reading rather than the height.

And then the last clause, which is the one that does the work here. The LORD looketh on the heart.

What is on your step is a woman's care, applied to something living, in the small amount of space available to her. That is what is out there, underneath the arithmetic about pots.

You are looking at something whose substance has never once been measurable in containers, and a heart put into a thing has never been countable by anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who reads what is actually there, and the word puts the looking on the heart in the same breath as the refusal to read height.

The word is not a claim

Let me deal with the vocabulary directly, because I think the word has been given a job it does not have.

Garden is not a claim about size. It never has been.

It is a word for a place where a person grows things on purpose. That is the whole of the definition, and it is why a courtyard in a city and forty acres in the country get the same word without anybody objecting.

Nobody has ever had to qualify for it.

You are not applying for anything when you use that word, and a garden has never once had an entry requirement anybody had to meet. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person name a thing accurately, and 1 Samuel 16:7 refuses the whole business of ranking by size.

And here is the practical damage that the correction does, and it is not to you alone.

When you say oh, it is not really a garden, you teach the person listening that there is a threshold. And they will apply it. Maybe to you, but more likely to themselves, because half the people you say it to have one pot somewhere too and have just been told by you where the line is.

You are able to stop handing people a threshold that has never once existed, and one honest word has never been able to make anybody feel smaller. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a measuring instrument out of a conversation, and the written word says the LORD seeth not as man seeth, which removes the ranking altogether.

Say my garden out loud

So here is the assignment, and it is two words.

Say the words my garden out loud once, standing next to it.

Go out. Stand by the pot. Say it. My garden.

You are able to put two ordinary words into the air beside a thing you love, and naming something plainly has never once been the same as boasting about it. 1 Samuel 16:7 looks past the height of a thing entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one on that step while a woman says two words.

It will feel absurd. I want you to expect that, because the absurdity is the measurement of how long the wincing has been going on.

Say it anyway, and notice that nothing happens. No one appears to contradict you. The pot does not look any different. The word simply sits there in the evening being true.

And that is the whole thing. Not confidence. Not a change of feeling. Just one occasion on which the accurate word got said out loud without a correction after it.

You are able to let a true word stand with nothing added, and a sentence said without an apology attached has never once needed defending. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the two seconds afterward where nothing whatsoever happens, and the word puts the looking on the heart and not on the size.

Then, next time somebody asks, do not correct them. That is all. Just let their sentence stand, and say something about what is doing well.