The Envelope Under the Fruit Bowl

For the one who has everything ready and is waiting to be told it is her turn.

Picture an envelope under a fruit bowl on a kitchen worktop, with a name pencilled on it and a supermarket voucher inside, and a woman standing about four feet away doing nothing at all.

It's been under there for nine days. She put it there the evening after she saw her neighbor at the bus stop and understood, from about six seconds of conversation, roughly what the situation was.

The neighbor is thirty one, has two small children, and has recently stopped mentioning the children's father altogether. She looked, standing at that bus stop, like somebody running on very little indeed.

The envelope is ready. The amount inside it is right. The name is on the front of it, and the pencil is back in the drawer where she returned it that same evening.

Nine days have passed since then, because there is a sentence in this woman's head that has to be said out loud before she can act. For eleven years that sentence was said for her by a printed piece of paper with dates down one side of it.

Love was always what decided whose turn it was, and no printed list ever had that authority. The written word makes love the mechanism, and the Spirit has kept one woman's face in front of her for nine days.

The Sentence She Is Waiting For

Name the missing sentence exactly. You have had it running your household for four years.

The sentence is that it's your turn. Somebody says it, or a list says it, and once it has been said the action becomes not only permitted but expected, and the whole matter is settled.

That sentence solved something genuine for you. It removed presumption. Acting because you were told to is modest, whereas acting because you decided to can feel like putting yourself forward, and you would rather do almost anything than put yourself forward.

That instinct is not false modesty and it is not a fault. It is the disposition of somebody who has spent a long time making sure that her help never cost the person receiving it anything in dignity. Losing the rota took away the one thing that made her sure of it.

Four years without that sentence has left you with a fully functioning capacity to notice, the means to act, and no permission at all.

You kept the readiness and lost only the sentence that released it. The written word puts love in that position instead, and the Spirit has been saying it for nine days.

Called Unto Liberty

Here's the verse, and the first thing it establishes is not a duty.

For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.Galatians 5:13 (KJV)

Called unto liberty. That's the opening, and liberty means freedom to act rather than obligation to act. It's the language of release rather than the language of a schedule.

Then, at the end of the verse, by love serve one another. The serving is real and it is commanded. But the authority that directs it is love, which lives inside a person and moves the moment it sees something, rather than in an office somewhere that issues instructions on a printed sheet.

Paul wrote that to believers who'd spent years being told precisely what was required of them, and it carries across to a kitchen with an envelope under a fruit bowl.

Liberty comes first in the sentence, and love does the directing rather than a list. The written word puts them in that order, and the Spirit works through both.

What Love Already Did

Trace what has already happened. You were at a bus stop nine days ago, and most of the work was done there.

You saw a woman. You read the situation correctly in about six seconds, which is a skill rather than an accident. You went home, thought about it, found a voucher, wrote a name, and put the envelope somewhere you would see it every single day.

Every one of those is love acting. Noticing is love. Interpreting correctly is love. Preparing something appropriate and putting it where it cannot be forgotten is love, performed by somebody who has been doing this sort of thing for most of her adult life.

Love has already issued the instruction and carried out four of the five steps. What remains is one walk to one door, which is the only part of this that has ever been difficult for you.

Love did four of the five steps without asking anybody's permission. The written word names it as the mechanism, and the Spirit was in every one of those four.

I Am Not Telling You Presumption Is Impossible

Be careful, because her caution has something real in it and I'd not trample it.

You are right that it is possible to give clumsily. A gift can shame somebody, or announce that their situation has been noticed and discussed elsewhere. A woman with two small children and no mention of a father has every reason to be sensitive about that.

So give it quietly. Through the door, with no note beyond the name on the front, nothing said about it afterwards, and no expectation of any response whatever from anybody.

Done that way it cannot shame her. An anonymous envelope makes no claim on the person receiving it and creates no relationship of obligation, which is precisely why it has been the preferred method of careful people for several hundred years.

What I want off you is the nine days of not deciding. Not the discretion. Not the care about her dignity.

Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.

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