I Cried At A Leaf

It was not a small cry.

That is what you have not said to anybody. It was not a prickle. You stood at the counter with a mug in your hand and it went through you properly, over a leaf that was maybe an inch long.

And afterward you had to decide what that was.

And the two available options are not kind ones. Either it was beautiful, in which case you are the sort of person who cries at plants, or it was a sign of how thin things have got, in which case something is wrong.

You picked the second one. Most people do.

So the whole of this is about that choice, and about the fact that it was a false one.

They shouted and they wept

Ezra records a moment where two things happened in one crowd and nobody could separate them.

But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy. (Ezra 3:12, King James Version)

Wept with a loud voice, and many shouted aloud for joy.

You are looking at a scene scripture records without resolving it, and two things arriving together has never once meant one of them was the wrong one. Ezra 3:12 has weeping and shouting in the same crowd at the same moment, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman at a counter with a mug.

Read what happens next, because it is the whole point.

The noise was so mixed that the people could not distinguish the shouting from the weeping, and the sound was heard a long way off.

Nobody sorted it out. No one stood up and asked which reaction was correct, or suggested that the weeping men were spoiling the occasion. The record simply keeps both, in the same sentence, and lets them be loud together.

You were never required to sort your own reaction into one column, and a thing scripture leaves unseparated has never once needed you to separate it. The Spirit of God is what makes that permission real, and Ezra 3 is where the two sounds are written down.

Why it was a false choice

Now the practical half, and it is about the two options.

Beautiful or a warning sign. Those were the choices, and both of them assume the tears were about the leaf.

They were not about the leaf. A leaf cannot produce that, and you know it cannot, which is precisely why the second option looked so convincing.

What happened is what always happens. Something small and good arrived, and it opened a door that a lot of other things had been standing behind, and they came through the door at the same time. That is not a symptom. That is the mechanism, and it is the same mechanism in everybody.

You are built the way everybody else is built, and a door that opens all at once has never once been a fault in the hinges. Ezra 3:12 records the mixed sound without a note of explanation, and the Spirit of God is the one who calls an ordinary thing ordinary.

You have a door that opens on good things and lets everything else through with them, and that has never once been a fault in the way you are built. What is written in Ezra 3:12 records the mixed sound without a word of explanation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names an ordinary human mechanism as ordinary.

And the choice was false in another way as well, which is worth saying.

Both options were about the woman rather than the leaf. Whether she is the kind of person who cries at plants. Whether something is wrong with her. In two seconds, a moment about a leaf and a good week became an assessment.

You were turned into the subject of a moment that was never about you, and two seconds has never once been long enough to establish anything. Ezra 3:12 keeps both sounds without sorting them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who closes a hearing that fast.

That happens quickly and it happens to almost everybody, and it is worth naming because it is the actual damage here.

You were assessed by the only person in the room within about two seconds, and no verdict issued that fast has ever once been worth keeping. The Spirit of God is the one who closes that hearing, and Ezra 3 is the ground under the two sounds.

Let it happen again

So here is the instruction and it asks for less rather than more.

Go back to it once today. And if it happens again, let it happen, and do not explain it to yourself afterward.

That last part is the instruction. The tears are not the thing to work on. The explaining is.

Because after the tears comes the analysis, and the analysis is where the damage is done, and the analysis takes considerably longer than the crying did.

You are able to stop before the second part begins, and skipping the explanation has never once been the same as not examining your own life. Ezra 3:12 analyzes nothing at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a thing stand unexplained.

So this time, if something comes up at the counter, let it come, and then go and do the next thing without asking what it meant. Wash the mug. Put the kettle on. Leave the room. The not explaining is harder than the crying. That is normal and it is the whole exercise.

You are able to feel something and leave it uninterpreted, and a reaction you never explained has never once been a reaction you failed to understand. Ezra 3:12 records the sound and does not analyze it, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman walking away from her own counter without a verdict.