One Of Them Came Up

One of them came up.

And something happened in you that was completely out of scale with the event, and you have spent the time since then trying to work out what to do about that.

Because on paper this is a seed doing the thing seeds do. There is nothing remarkable in it. It is the most ordinary outcome available, and if it had not happened nobody would have been surprised either.

And you stood there with your hand on the counter.

You are not overreacting, and the size of what went through you has never once had to match the size of what caused it.

Now, I want to be careful here, because there is a way of handling this that would spoil it, and it is the way most things written about small pleasures handle them.

It would be to explain it. To say that it is not really about the plant, that it represents something, that the shoot stands for hope or for a season turning or for something in your own life.

I am not going to do that, and here is why.

Explaining it makes it acceptable by making it about something bigger. And that agrees with the very thing that is troubling you, which is that a green shoot is not enough to justify what you felt.

It is enough. That is the whole of this article.

And God saw that it was good

There is a line on the third page of the Bible that is about exactly this, and it is stranger than people notice.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so. And the earth brought forth grass, and the herb yielding seed. And God saw that it was good. (Genesis 1:11 and 12, King James Version)

And God saw that it was good.

Now, hold on to what has just happened. Grass has appeared. The most ordinary green thing there is, the thing that grows in pavement cracks without anybody's involvement.

And God stops and looks at it and calls it good.

You are looking at the most ordinary green thing there is being stopped over and called good, and grass has never once been beneath the notice of the one who made it. Genesis 1:12 has God pausing at the herb yielding seed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a woman standing at a counter over a shoot.

And notice that He does not explain why. There is no reason attached. It does not say it was good because it would feed people, or because it was part of a larger plan, or because of what it would lead to.

It was good. Full stop. The seeing and the calling are the whole of it.

You are not required to justify a thing by what it leads to, and something called good in that chapter has never once needed a reason appended to it. The Holy Spirit is the one who values a thing for itself, and the written word gives no explanation anywhere in that line.

And there is one more thing, which is that this is the response of somebody who already knew what would happen.

He said let the earth bring forth and the earth brought forth. There was no suspense. He was not waiting to see. And He still stopped and looked and called it good.

You are in company with somebody who is moved by an outcome He was certain of, and a known result has never once been disqualified from being worth stopping at. The Spirit of God is the one who looked at grass He had just commanded and called it good, and the word records the pause without any embarrassment about it.

Do not scale it down

Let me be practical about what has been happening since, because there is a pattern here and it has already started.

The apologizing has begun.

Not out loud, necessarily. But in the way you would describe it, if asked. It would come out with a small laugh, or with the words it is silly, or with a shrug that does the same work.

And each one of those scales it down, in advance, before anybody has responded.

You are handing people a smaller version than the one you actually have, and a thing offered at a reduced size has never once been received at its real one. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person keep the size of what happened to them, and Genesis 1:12 calls a thing good without one qualifying word anywhere near it.

And here is what the scaling down actually costs, which is not pride.

The having of it goes. That is the cost. A thing publicly reduced becomes reduced in the memory too, because the smaller version has now been said several times, out loud, to an audience.

In a month you will remember a small pleasant morning. And it was not that.

You are able to keep what actually happened rather than the version you told, and a moment described honestly has never once been a moment somebody claimed too much about. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a thing at its real size, and the written word simply says it was good and does not moderate it.

Show it to one person today

So here is the assignment, and it is the tenant's own and it is right.

Show it to one person today, in person or in a photograph.

One. Today, while it is current, not at the weekend when it has settled into a fact.

You are able to show one small good thing to one person, and a thing shared on the day has never once been the same as a thing reported later. Genesis 1:12 records a stopping and a looking at the moment it happened, and the Holy Spirit is the one at that sill while somebody turns a phone round.

And show it without the laugh. That is the second half.

Do not say it is silly. Do not say it is only a bean. Do not get in first with a smaller version so that their response cannot disappoint you.

Say: that came up this morning.

And then let whatever they say be whatever they say. Their response is to a photograph and yours is to eleven days, and those were never going to be the same size, and that is not a problem to be managed.

You are able to let somebody else's answer be their own, and a proportionate response from another person has never once been a verdict on yours. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a person's own gladness intact through a lukewarm reply, and the word calls the green thing good without waiting for anybody to agree.