It Was Doing So Well

On the Friday it was fine.

That is the part you keep going back to. Not the losing of it. The Friday. Because on the Friday you looked at it and thought, that is doing well, and you felt a small ordinary satisfaction and went about your day.

And by the following Thursday it was over.

Now, you have lost things before. This is not your first. And what has been sitting oddly with you is that this one has bothered you more than losses that were objectively worse, and you have not been able to work out why.

Let me put to you what I think it is.

It is not the plant. It is that something can be visibly fine and be finished a week later, and you were standing right there and could not tell.

You are not being warned about anything, and one thing turning has never once been a message about the others.

And here is where it has actually gone, which is the reason we are talking about it at all.

Since then you have looked at other things differently. Not just plants. You have caught yourself looking at things that are currently going well with a small new reservation in it, and the reservation was not there in March.

That is what a reversal does. It does not stay where it happened.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth

There is a line in Isaiah that is honest about this in a way most comfort is not.

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever. (Isaiah 40:8, King James Version)

The grass withereth, the flower fadeth.

Now, notice that the verse states it flatly. There is no softening. It does not say the grass sometimes withers, or that it withers only under certain conditions, or that a careful gardener can prevent it.

It says withereth, as a plain description of how that class of thing behaves.

You are being told the truth about a category rather than being reassured out of it, and Scripture has never once denied that living things fail. Isaiah 40:8 states the withering as a fact, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an unsoftened sentence land as steadiness rather than as bad news.

And that matters, because what has unsettled you is precisely the discovery that a thing can look fine and not be.

The verse already knew. It is not surprised. There is no shock anywhere in it, which means the thing that has disturbed you this week is not a new fact about the world, it is a fact you had temporarily stopped holding.

You are not looking at something that has changed, and a fact about how green things behave has never once been altered by a person noticing it again. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies somebody who has just remembered something true, and the written word had this written down long before it happened on your windowsill.

And then the second half, which is the whole reason the first half can be said so plainly. But the word of our God shall stand for ever.

The verse does not comfort by disputing the withering. It comforts by naming something that does not do that, and putting it in the same sentence.

You are being offered something that stands rather than an argument that nothing falls, and comfort in that verse has never once come from denying the first half of it. The Spirit of God is the one who holds out the thing that does not fade, and the word puts the withering and the standing side by side without any tension between them.

The reservation is the actual injury

Let me be practical about what has been happening since, because the plant is finished and the other thing is not.

A reversal teaches a lesson that is broader than the event.

You lost one plant. But what your mind extracted was a general principle about appearances, and it has been applying that principle to everything since, including things that have nothing to do with windowsills.

That is not caution. Caution is useful and it is specific. This is a low general reservation about anything that looks fine, and it does not protect you from anything.

You are carrying a general rule extracted from one particular event, and a lesson drawn that wide has never once been a lesson that keeps anybody safe. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes an over-large conclusion out of somebody's hands, and Isaiah 40:8 says a true thing about grass without turning it into a rule about everything else.

And here is the cost, which is exact and worth naming.

The reservation does not prevent losses. It cannot. Nothing about holding back your enjoyment of a thing has any bearing on whether that thing continues.

What it does is remove the enjoyment now, in advance, from things that are currently fine.

You are paying a real price today against a loss that may not come, and if the loss does come you will pay again then. That is not protection, it is paying twice.

You are not able to buy anything with a withheld enjoyment, and holding back from something going well has never once made its ending easier. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a person be glad in the present tense, and the written word puts the standing thing beside the fading one rather than asking anybody to stop looking at flowers.

Name one thing that is going well

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not about the plant that died.

Name one thing that is currently going well and say it out loud.

Anything. Another plant on that sill. Something with a person in it. Something at work. It does not have to be large and it does not have to be safe.

You are able to name a good thing that is currently true, and a present tense fact has never once needed a guarantee attached to be worth saying. Isaiah 40:8 puts the standing thing right beside the fading one, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen while a woman says a good thing out loud.

Say it plainly, and this is where the work is: without the hedge.

Do not say it is going well at the moment. Do not say so far. Do not say touch wood. Every one of those is the reservation putting its hand up, and saying it with the hedge attached is practicing the very thing we are trying to interrupt.

You are able to state a good thing with nothing guarding it, and an unhedged sentence about something going well has never once made it more likely to end. The Holy Spirit is the one present when somebody says a plain glad thing, and the word states the withering plainly and then states the standing just as plainly, with no hedging in either direction.

And then leave it. Do not check on the thing you named. The point was the saying.