I Keep It For Somebody Who Visits

She has been coming once a month for two years.

And that plant has been on the sill for every one of those visits, watered, turned, in reasonable shape, because she gave it to you and because you know she will walk past it on the way to the kitchen.

And she has never said anything about it.

Not once. Not oh, you still have that. Not a glance that lands. Nothing.

And you have noticed yourself watching her face as she comes through, for about half a second, and then looking away.

So the thing to say first is about the half second rather than the plant.

You have been waiting for something for two years, and it has not come, and the waiting has quietly become part of the visit.

God is not unrighteous to forget

Hebrews has a line about labor that names exactly what is at stake here.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Hebrews 6:10, King James Version)

God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love.

You are held by somebody for whom forgetting a work of love would be an injustice, and no unmentioned labor of yours has ever once slipped out of that. Hebrews 6:10 says God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman watching a door once a month.

Look at how strongly it is put. Not: God remembers. Not: God is kind enough to take notice.

Unrighteous. It would be an injustice, a wrong, a thing contrary to what God is, for that work to be forgotten. The verse puts the remembering into His character rather than into His goodwill.

And it names the work precisely: your work and labor of love. Not your achievements. The labor that came out of love, which is exactly the category a watered plant kept for a visitor falls into.

You were never at risk of being overlooked, and a work of love has never once been the kind of thing that could be let go of. The Spirit of God is what makes that firm rather than comforting, and Hebrews 6 is where the injustice is written down.

Why she has not said anything

Now the practical half, and it is worth being generous about her, because the answer is almost certainly dull.

She does not know it is for her.

That is the most likely explanation by a long way. She gave you a plant two years ago, which she has probably forgotten doing, and now there is a plant in your house, and plants are in houses. There is nothing in that scene that says anything to a visitor.

The connection between the gift and the plant exists entirely in your kitchen. It has never been in hers.

You are waiting for a recognition that would require her to know something she was never told, and her silence has never once been a decision she made. What is written in Hebrews 6:10 keeps the work safe regardless of who noticed it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an ordinary silence off a visitor.

And here is the part that matters more, and it is about the half second.

That half second has been costing you the visit. Not much, and not visibly, but every month there is a small measurement taken in the first ten seconds and it comes back negative, and the rest of the afternoon carries it.

Two years of that is twenty four small disappointments collected at a front door.

You have been taking a reading at the start of every visit, and no half second at a doorway has ever once been able to tell you what you are actually asking. The Spirit of God is the one who names that gently, and Hebrews 6 is the ground under it.

Do not look at her face

So here is the instruction and the second half is the whole of it.

Water it before she comes this month. Turn it, tidy the sill, do what you do.

And when she walks past it, do not look at her face.

That is the instruction. Not stop caring, not tell her, not stop keeping the plant. Only this: do not take the reading. Carry the tray, open the door, ask about the journey. Let her walk past that sill and be genuinely unobserved for the first time in two years. Because the reading is the part that hurts, and it is the only part of this that is entirely in your hands.

You are able to skip one measurement this month, and a reading not taken has never once been the same as not caring about the answer. Hebrews 6:10 keeps the labor of love safe without requiring anybody to mention it, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman carrying a tray past her own windowsill.