I Had Acres And Now I Have A Sill

You had land.

Not an community plot. Land, the kind that takes a season to plan and a year to learn and that a man walks the whole of before breakfast. You knew where the water sat after rain and which corner caught the frost and which end you could get on in March.

And now there is a windowsill in a kitchen that is not the kitchen you had, and it is about five feet long.

Somebody says, at least you have got the sill. And they mean well and you say something pleasant.

You are not down to a remnant, and one sill has never once been the last piece of what a man used to have.

Let me get straight to what is actually happening, because I think it is precise and I think you know it.

You are not failing to appreciate the sill. You are grieving the land, and the sill is where the grieving is currently standing.

Every time you look at it, an arithmetic runs. Five feet against several acres. And the arithmetic is correct, and it comes out the way it comes out, and having a true sum run at you daily is a wearing thing.

And here is the difficulty with that particular sum. It has no end. It will produce the same answer every single day for as long as you keep running it, because the acreage is fixed and the sill is fixed and nothing about either of them is going to change.

Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory

There is a moment in Haggai when a rebuilt temple is standing and the old men who remember the first one are weeping, and God asks a question about it.

Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and how do ye see it now? is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing? (Haggai 2:3, King James Version)

Is it not in your eyes in comparison of it as nothing.

Now, the first thing to notice, and it is a considerable thing, is who is asking. God asks that question. He raises the comparison Himself.

He does not tell them to stop looking backward. He does not correct the arithmetic. He puts their own sum into words and asks them to confirm it.

You are dealing with somebody who names the comparison rather than forbidding it, and God has never once handled a loss by telling a man not to notice it. Haggai 2:3 has God asking the question out loud, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an old man's grief in a rebuilt temple land on a man looking at a windowsill.

And look at the exact phrase He uses. In your eyes.

Not: it is nothing. In your eyes as nothing. He locates the comparison in how it is being seen rather than in what the thing is, and He does that without any accusation attached.

You are being told where a judgment is happening rather than being told it is wrong, and a thing that looks like nothing has never once been declared to be nothing. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a sight from a verdict, and the written word says in your eyes without one word of reproach about it.

And then, in the verses immediately after, God does not argue about the size at all. He says be strong, and work, for I am with you. The comparison is acknowledged, left standing, and simply not made the deciding factor.

You are not required to win an argument about size before you may work, and a smaller thing has never once had to be defended before somebody was told to get on with it. The Spirit of God is the one who says be strong and work immediately after acknowledging the loss, and the word never once disputes the arithmetic it raised.

The sill is not a remnant

Let me say something about the object itself, because there is a category error running and it is doing damage.

That sill is not a piece of your land.

It is not the last surviving fragment, kept back while the rest went. It is a different thing entirely, in a different place, that arrived by a different route, and it has no relationship to the acreage except the one your mind has built.

The sum has been comparing two unrelated objects and reporting a loss.

You are running a comparison between two things that were never once parts of the same thing, and a windowsill has never been a portion of a field. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes apart a false relation, and Haggai 2:3 puts the whole comparison in the eyes rather than in the buildings.

And there is something a sill can do that acres could not, and I say this to a man who knows enough to check it rather than to be flattered.

You can grow the difficult things. The ones that need watching, that want a particular hand, that fail on a windy site or get eaten in an open bed. Five feet of sheltered indoor light at a comfortable height is a serious growing position, and a man with your knowledge on five good feet is a different proposition from a novice with an acre.

You are holding a position that suits what you actually know, and knowledge has never once needed acreage in order to be worth something. The Spirit of God is the one who puts a man where his experience can be used, and the written word tells the men who remembered the first house to be strong and work on the second.

Three pots, arranged your way

So here is the assignment, and the arranging is the point rather than the planting.

Put three pots on the sill and arrange them the way you want them.

Three. Not one, because one is a token and you would know it. Three is a composition, and a composition requires decisions.

You are able to make three decisions about a piece of ground, and a sill with three pots on it has never once been an object somebody was merely tolerating. Haggai 2:3 is followed immediately by be strong and work, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen while a man moves a pot four inches to the left.

And arrange them properly. Spacing, height, which one at the end, which gets the best of the light. Move them and stand back and move them again. That is not fussing, that is what you did with the land, and it is the part of it you have not done in years.

Because here is what has actually been missing, and it is not acreage. It is judgment being exercised. A man who worked land was making forty decisions a day, and a sill somebody put a plant on for him is a place where he makes none.

You are able to exercise judgment on five feet of sill, and a small space has never once removed a man's need to decide anything. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man his own decisions back, and the word puts the working immediately after the acknowledging of the loss.

And nobody else touches that sill after this. That is not petulance, it is the whole point.