I Took Eleven Photographs Of It

Eleven photographs of the same thing.

You know the number because you looked. They are all in a row in the same folder, taken over about four days, and several of them are from more or less the same angle.

And you have shown nobody.

Not your wife, who is in the house. Not the man at work you talk to about this sort of thing. Nobody.

And that is the part worth looking at, because the photographing is easy to explain and the not showing is not.

You are not being foolish about a seedling, and eleven photographs of one small thing have never once been evidence that a man has lost his sense of proportion.

Let me put two possible reasons on the table and you will know immediately which one it is.

The first is that showing somebody would invite a reaction, and the reaction might be smaller than the thing is in you, and then you would have to watch your own feeling get sized by somebody who has not been standing over that pot for eleven days.

The second is that showing somebody would make it real in a way it is not yet, and the thing is small and new and could still go, and a man who has told people has further to fall.

I suspect it is mostly the first, with some of the second underneath it.

Mary kept all these things

There is a line in Luke that comes at the end of the loudest night in the gospel and describes the quietest possible response.

But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart. (Luke 2:19, King James Version)

Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

Now, look at what has just happened around her. Shepherds have arrived, in the middle of the night, saying they were told by angels. They have told everybody. The text says all they that heard it wondered.

And in the middle of the telling and the wondering, she keeps them and says nothing.

You are not the only one who has held something without handing it over, and keeping a thing in the heart has never once been treated in the gospels as a failure to share it. Luke 2:19 records the keeping with approval rather than as a reluctance, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man with eleven photographs and nobody shown.

And the word kept is worth noticing. It does not mean hid. It means treasured, held onto, the way a person keeps something valuable rather than the way they conceal something awkward.

That is a real distinction and it is the one that matters here.

You are able to treasure a thing privately without that being the same as hiding it, and a man holding something close has never once been a man ashamed of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows which of the two a person is doing, and the written word uses a word about treasuring rather than a word about concealment.

And then pondered. Turned them over. Kept looking at them.

Which is, as it happens, a reasonably exact description of what a man does when he opens the same folder in the evening and looks at eleven photographs of a seedling.

You are doing something the gospel records without one word of comment, and turning a small good thing over repeatedly has never once needed defending. The Spirit of God is the one present in a person's quiet going over of something, and the word simply records that she did it and moves on.

The reaction you are braced for

Let me deal with the first reason, because I think it is the operative one and I think it can be answered.

The bracing is for a proportionate response.

You show somebody a photograph of a seedling and they say oh, nice, because that is a proportionate response to a photograph of a seedling. And your feeling is not proportionate, and so the gap between what you feel and what comes back would be visible, and visible to you rather than to them.

That is what has kept you from showing anybody. Not their judgment. The gap.

You are protecting a feeling rather than hiding a plant, and a gap between what a man feels and what somebody says back has never once been a judgment on the feeling. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a man's own gladness from being sized by a stranger's response, and Luke 2:19 has a woman holding something that nobody around her could have matched.

And here is the thing about that gap which I would like you to have.

It is not evidence. A person who was not there does not have the eleven days. They have a photograph, taken on a phone, of a green thing about an inch high. Their response is proportionate to what they were given, which is almost none of it.

Their oh, nice is an accurate response to the photograph. It is not a response to the thing, because the thing is not transferable.

You are holding something that has never once been possible to hand over in an image, and a small response to a photograph has never been a small response to what you actually have. The Spirit of God is the one who knows the whole of what a man is holding, and the written word has Mary keeping what the shepherds had only heard about.

Show one, and say nothing apologetic

So here is the assignment, and both halves are needed.

Show one of the photographs to one person, and say nothing apologetic.

One photograph. Not the folder. Pick the best of the eleven and show it to one person, and it does not need to be a person who gardens.

You are able to show one thing to one person, and a single photograph shown has never once obliged a man to explain himself afterward. Luke 2:19 has a woman keeping and pondering without any instruction to broadcast, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while a man turns a phone round.

And the second half, which is the one that will be hard.

You are able to hand something over without handing over a verdict on it first, and a photograph shown plainly has never once needed a size attached by the person showing it. Luke 2:19 records the keeping with no diminishment anywhere in the sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in the two seconds after a phone gets turned round.

Say nothing apologetic. Do not say it is only a seedling. Do not mention that there are about eleven of these, with the laugh on the end. Do not offer a reason for showing it.

Because every one of those gets in first and sizes the thing down before the other person has said anything, and then their small response will feel like agreement with the size you offered.

Show it and say what it is. That came up on Tuesday.

You are able to present a good thing without a disclaimer, and a plain sentence about something has never once needed an apology attached to protect it. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a man in the two seconds after he shows somebody something, and the word records Mary keeping what she had without any diminishing of it anywhere in the sentence.

And then let their response be whatever it is. It is not a verdict, it is a response to a photograph.