He said he would collect it.
That was the arrangement, and it was a completely normal arrangement. He was moving, there was a van, there was no room for the plant, and he said he would get it off you when he was settled.
That was about fourteen months ago.
And you have watered it every week since. And you have thought about him roughly every time, which is probably more often than you would have thought about him otherwise, which is a strange thing to notice about yourself.
And the messages got shorter, and then further apart, and now it has been a while, and you are not sure who stopped first.
So here is what this is really about, and it is not the plant.
You have been keeping a friendship on a windowsill.
A friend loveth at all times
Proverbs says something about friendship that is short enough to be easily misread.
A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity. (Proverbs 17:17, King James Version)
A friend loveth at all times.
You are inside a friendship that is described by a continuing love rather than a continuing contact, and no gap between messages has ever once been the measure of it. Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loveth at all times, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man watering somebody else's plant.
Read it as a description rather than as a test. It does not say a friend contacts at all times. It does not say a friend collects his belongings promptly.
It says loveth. Which is a disposition rather than an activity, and a disposition can go a long time without producing an event.
Fourteen months of silence between two men who moved to different cities is not necessarily a change in that disposition. It is often just what happens when two lives stop overlapping and neither man is any good at maintaining things by telephone.
You were never told that a quiet stretch means something has ended, and a friendship with no recent event in it has never once been a friendship that stopped. The Spirit of God is what keeps that from being wishful thinking, and Proverbs 17 is where the loving at all times is written down.
Two things, not one
Now the practical half, and it is a separation.
There are two things sitting on your windowsill and they have gotten fused, and that is why neither of them can move.
The first is a plant. It has been in that house for fourteen months, watered about sixty times, and by any ordinary reckoning it is yours now.
You have kept a living thing going for over a year, and sixty waterings has never once been the record of somebody who was merely minding it. Proverbs 17:17 puts the friendship in the loving, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a man call a thing his own.
The second is a friendship that has gone quiet, which you are not sure how to reopen, and which the plant has been standing in for.
And the fusing is what keeps you stuck. Because as long as the plant is his, the friendship is technically still in progress, and there is an outstanding item, and neither of you has to do anything about the actual silence.
The plant has been protecting both of you from noticing.
You have been holding an open item as a substitute for a conversation, and a pot on a sill has never once been able to do what a message does. What is written in Proverbs 17:17 puts the friendship in the loving rather than in the logistics, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates two things that got welded together.
So the instruction has two halves and they are deliberately unrelated to each other.
The plant is yours. Say it today, and stop thinking of it as being minded.
And separately, send him one message. Not about the plant.
You are able to do both of those in the same day without either one depending on the other, and a message with nothing to collect in it has never once been harder than a message with an excuse attached. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a plain message possible, and Proverbs 17 is the ground under it.
Nothing about the plant
That second half has a rule and the rule is the whole point.
Do not mention the plant.
The temptation will be enormous, because the plant is a reason, and a reason makes a message easy. Still got your plant, when are you coming for it, is a message you could send in eight seconds.
And it would be a message about logistics, and he would answer about logistics, and nothing at all would have happened between two men.
So send the other one. Whatever is actually true. Thought about you the other day. Saw a thing that reminded me of that trip. How is the new place, really. Four lines at most. No mention of anything he owes you, because he does not owe you anything, and because a pot is not what you want back.
You are allowed to want the man rather than the plant, and saying so without an errand attached has never once been the more embarrassing way to do it. Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loveth at all times, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a man's thumbs over four plain lines.
You are able to reach for somebody without a pretext, and a message with no errand in it has never once been the more embarrassing option. Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loveth at all times, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a man typing something with no reason attached.
So here is what is going out over a man watering something he has been calling somebody else's.
You are free to keep it because you want to, and a friendship that went quiet has never once been held together by a pot on your windowsill. I am not going to tell you what he will say, and I am not going to promise you anything about either the plant or the man. Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who separates a living thing from an unfinished conversation.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You have been using an outstanding item to avoid noticing a silence, and no open errand between two men has ever once been the same as contact. The Spirit of God is the one who makes that land rather than merely read, and Proverbs 17 is where the loving at all times stands written.
The plant is yours. And send the message anyway.
Declare this over yourself
- Open item on my windowsill, you are not a friendship and you never were. Proverbs 17:17 says a friend loveth at all times, so by the Holy Spirit I say out loud today that this plant is mine, and I send four lines with nothing about it in them, in the name of Jesus.
- Silence I keep measuring, you have never once been proof of what he thinks of me. The written word describes a friend by a love that continues and not by a message that arrives, and by the Holy Spirit I stop reading a gap as a verdict.
- Father, You wrote that a friend loves at all times and a brother is born for adversity, and You did not make the loving conditional on the contact. Your word says a friend loveth at all times, so by Your Spirit I take the plant as mine, and I reach for the man with nothing to collect.
Proverbs 17:17
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
