Do Not Give Me Another One

You say it lightly.

Oh, do not give me a plant, they die at my house. And everybody laughs, and the subject moves on, and it sounds like the kind of thing a person says about themselves without meaning much by it.

But you have said it four or five times now, and each time the joke has done real work, which is to close a door before anybody can put something through it.

Because what actually happens when somebody hands you a plant is not pleasure. It is a small drop, and then a calculation about how long it has got, and then the effort of looking delighted.

So you head it off. And the heading off has become a policy.

Here is what I think you are refusing, and it is not a plant.

You are refusing to be handed one more thing you are going to disappoint.

There is therefore now no condemnation

Paul opens Romans eight with a sentence that people quote about big sins and almost never apply to a kitchen.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. (Romans 8:1, King James Version)

There is therefore now no condemnation.

You are standing in a place where no charge can be filed, and no windowsill in your house has ever once had the standing to bring one. Romans 8:1 says there is therefore now no condemnation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman making a joke at a door.

Look at the word now. Not eventually. Not once the record improves.

Paul is writing to people who had actual failures behind them and would have more ahead, and he does not say the condemnation has been suspended pending review. He says it is not there.

And that has to reach down into small ordinary things, or it does not really reach anywhere. A doctrine that covers the enormous and leaves a woman being quietly sentenced over a pot has been cut down to a size that cannot hold anybody.

You were placed outside the reach of condemnation entirely, and nothing that happened on your counter has ever once been admitted as evidence. The Spirit of God is what makes that land in an ordinary kitchen, and Romans 8 is where the now is written down.

What the joke costs

Now the practical half, and it is about the door rather than the plant.

The joke works. That is the trouble with it. It is charming, it lands, and nobody ever gives you a plant.

But look at what else it does.

It says out loud, in company, in your own voice, a sentence about yourself that is not true. Things die at my house. And a sentence said lightly and often becomes furniture. Nobody argues with furniture.

It also tells the person in front of you something about how to treat you. They file it. And next time they think of you and a small living thing, they do not.

You have been describing yourself with a line you never once sat down and agreed to, and a joke repeated five times has never once earned the authority it now has. What is written in Romans 8:1 removes the condemnation rather than softening it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a woman's own sentence off her.

And here is the part underneath. The joke is not really protecting you from a dead plant. It is protecting you from being seen failing at something small in front of somebody who was kind to you.

That is a real fear and it is not silly. A gift creates a witness. Somebody knows you have it, and somebody may ask about it in three weeks.

You are allowed to be watched while you try something, and a person asking after a plant has never once been a person checking up on your character. The Spirit of God is the one who turns a witness back into a friend, and Romans 8 is the ground that makes it safe.

Say yes to the next one

So the assignment is not to go out and get a plant. It is smaller than that, and harder.

Say yes to the next one.

When somebody offers, do not do the joke. Say thank you, and take it, and put it somewhere you will see it.

That is the whole thing. No promise is required, no announcement about turning a corner, and certainly no obligation to keep it alive in order to have done the right thing here.

If nobody offers you one in the next while, then do the second version: put one where you will see it, and tell one person that you took it. The telling is the part that matters, because it is the part the joke was built to prevent.

You are free to be seen holding something you might not keep, and letting one person know has never once been the same as making them a promise. Romans 8:1 says there is therefore now no condemnation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it possible to say thank you instead of the joke.