The Bible Beside the Rain Gauge

For the reader who used to host the daily call and now can't open the book without hearing a number.

It's 6:05 on a Thursday and you're outside in a coat over pajamas reading the rain gauge, which you have done every morning for nine years without missing one.

Eleven millimeters. You write it in the notebook on the windowsill, in the column, underneath yesterday's figure. That notebook goes back to a year you'd have to check, and there isn't a single gap in it anywhere.

Accuracy of that kind is a discipline most people never acquire. You acquired it without effort, because measuring something every morning for nine years is either impossible or automatic and never anything in between.

Then you come inside, the book is on the table, and you don't open it.

You used to host a call at half past six. Fourteen people, most mornings, for four years. You read, somebody prayed, and it ran like weather: the same hour, the same order, and you kept it going through two house moves.

A lamp at the feet lights one step, and nobody is counting this. Scripture's psalm was written down as a lamp rather than a tally, and the Spirit gives light for a step without asking what your record is.

The Counter You Brought Home With You

The call needed a counter. Anything with fourteen people in it does, and you were right to keep one.

Attendance, consistency, whether you'd read ahead, whether the whole arrangement was holding together. That counter was useful and it was part of the job. Nobody should apologize for keeping a good thing running with care.

What nobody warned you about is that a counter doesn't switch off when the job ends. It simply loses its object and goes looking for another one.

So it found your mornings. Now every time you think about opening the book, something in you starts totting up: how long it's been, what a real practice would look like, how far behind you must be by now.

You measure rain because rain can be measured. You have been applying the same instrument to a thing that has no units, and getting a reading that says you're failing.

You aren't being measured, because what happens at that table has no units. The psalm as written calls God's word a lamp for one step rather than a total, and the Spirit gives it without reference to a record.

A Lamp for the Next Step

Here's the verse, and what matters is how little ground it covers.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path.Psalm 119:105 (KJV)

A lamp unto my feet. Not a floodlight over the whole field, not a forecast, not a year's plan drawn up in advance. A lamp at the feet lights the next step and nothing beyond it, which is exactly as much as a person walking at night actually needs.

That's a picture of provision rather than performance. The lamp doesn't ask how far you have come. It doesn't refuse to light the next step because you sat down for eighteen months.

Those words were first written by somebody walking through real trouble with enemies behind him, and they arrive in a kitchen with a notebook on the windowsill without losing anything.

You are given light for the step you're on and never a bill for the ones you missed. The written Word's psalm as written promises a lamp for the feet, and the Spirit lights it on a morning that follows a long gap.

Weather Does Not Owe You Anything Either

Use your own notebook against the counter, because it already knows something you haven't applied.

Nine years of measurements, and not one of them is a judgment. Eleven millimeters isn't good or bad. A dry August isn't a failure and a wet one isn't an achievement. You write the number and turn the page.

You've never once felt guilty about a reading, and you've never told yourself that four consecutive dry days mean something unflattering about your character. The suggestion would strike you as ridiculous, because measurement and judgment are separate activities and you've always kept them separate outdoors.

Indoors, apparently, they collapsed into one, and nobody was there to point it out.

That's what happens when an instrument leaves the job it was built for. It goes on working exactly as designed, produces a number that looks authoritative, and nobody thinks to ask whether the quantity it names exists.

You can note what happened without sentencing yourself for it, exactly as you do with rain. The written Word gives light for the path rather than a grade for the journey, and the Spirit isn't keeping a column on you.

I Am Not Starting You on Anything

Say clearly what this won't do, because the obvious ending would be a small trap.

I'm not going to suggest a plan, a minimum, or a gentle little rhythm to ease you back in. Every one of those installs a counter, and you already have one of those living in your house rent free.

Nor am I telling you the call was the problem or that you should find another one. It was good work and fourteen people were better for it. If something like it comes round again, take it.

What I want gone is the tally. Not the notebook. The tally you brought home from the call.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

Written by Tahoma This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.