I Think I Planted Them Wrong

Nothing has come up, and so you have begun making a list.

Too deep. That is the first item, and it arrived on about day six. You have a clear memory of pressing them in with your thumb and now you are not sure whether a thumb is too much.

Then the water. Either too much on the first day or not enough since, and you have argued both sides of that with yourself at three in the afternoon.

Then the light. Then whether the soil out of that bag had been sitting in a shed too long. Then whether the packet was old, which is not your fault, except that you were the one who chose it.

Six items now. Maybe seven.

And here is the thing about that list which nobody has said to you: every item on it was constructed out of nothing.

There is no evidence in your possession. There is a pot with soil in it and nothing visible. That is the entire body of fact available, and it is equally consistent with every one of your six theories and with the very ordinary possibility that eleven days is simply not very long.

You are not obliged to prosecute yourself over an empty pot, and an absence of evidence has never once been the same thing as evidence.

I want to look at the machine rather than the items, because you could answer all six and the machine would produce a seventh by Friday.

Search me, O God

There is a verse at the end of Psalm 139 that people use as a prayer of self examination, and if you look at it properly it does the opposite.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting. (Psalm 139:23 and 24, King James Version)

Search me, O God.

Now look at who is doing the searching in that sentence, because it is not David.

He does not say let me search my heart. He does not say I will examine my thoughts and report back. He hands the entire investigation over, and every verb in it belongs to God.

You are looking at a prayer that gives the searching away, and Scripture has never once handed a person the job of examining themselves without end. Psalm 139:23 puts every verb of that investigation on God, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an inquiry out of a woman's hands when she has been running it alone.

And notice why that matters practically.

An investigation run by the person under investigation has no way to finish. There is nobody to accept the findings. There is no moment where somebody says, that is enough, we are done here. So it goes round again, and produces item seven, and item eight.

David's prayer ends the loop by handing it to somebody who can actually conclude it.

You have been running a case with no judge in the room, and an inquiry with nobody to receive it has never once been able to reach an end. The Holy Spirit is the one who can bring a searching to a close, and the written word puts the knowing of a heart with God rather than with the person who owns it.

And there is one more thing worth having in that psalm.

The whole of Psalm 139 up to that point is about being thoroughly known already. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising. So when David says search me, he is not asking God to find something out. He is asking God to do openly what He has been doing all along, and to lead him afterward.

You are already thoroughly known by the one you would be handing this to, and a search has never once been how God finds out about somebody. The word says thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising long before it says search me, and the Spirit of God is the one who knew every item on your list before you wrote the first one.

The list is not about the seeds

Let me say something that might land uncomfortably, and I say it gently.

That list is a familiar object.

Not the contents. The shape. The way it arrives in the quiet part of the afternoon, the way each item feels urgent and then dissolves under examination, the way answering one produces another, the way it always concludes with something being your responsibility.

I think you have had lists like it before, about other things.

You were never being handed a problem about horticulture, and a habit that shows up around a pot has never once started with a pot. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person the shape of a thing rather than only its contents, and Psalm 139:23 asks for the searching of a heart rather than of a set of circumstances.

And that is worth knowing, because it changes what would actually help.

If this were about seeds, a better technique would fix it. Somebody would tell you the correct depth and the list would stop.

But a better technique would just move the list. There would be a new item about the new method, and you would be back in the same afternoon with the same feeling and a different set of six things.

You are dealing with something a correct method has never once been able to answer, and better information has never once quietened a mind that was busy in this particular way. The Spirit of God is the one who settles what technique cannot reach, and the written word puts the whole matter in the hands of somebody who both knows and leads.

Say search me, and stop listing

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

Go to the sill and say it out loud. Search me.

That is all. Not a whole prayer. Not a list read aloud, which would be the list wearing a hat. Two words, said out loud, at the pot.

You are able to hand the whole investigation over in two words, and a short prayer has never once carried less than a long one. Psalm 139:23 is two words and then a handover, and the Holy Spirit is the one who receives an inquiry that a person has been carrying alone since day six.

And then the refusal, which is the part that costs.

When item seven arrives, and it will, probably tonight, do not work on it.

Not answer it, not argue it, not look anything up. Notice it, and let it sit there unexamined, and go and do something else. Item seven does not need to be defeated. It needs to be left alone until it gets bored.

You are permitted to leave a thought entirely unanswered, and an item on a list has never once required a reply from the person it arrived in. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in the moment where a woman declines to take something up, and the word has already given the searching to God, which means the next item is not addressed to you.