I Look At It Every Time I Pass

It is on the way to everything.

The kettle is past it. The door is past it. The window you open in the morning is right there, so you are at that sill four, five, nine times a day without ever having decided to be.

And every single time, your eyes go to it.

It is not a decision. It happens before anything you would call thinking. Eyes go left, register the state of it, and something in your chest does a small quiet drop, and then you carry on to the kettle.

Nine small drops a day. That is what this has cost.

I want to start there, because the plant is only part of this and the crossing is the whole of it.

You are not in charge of the glance. But the sentence that comes after it is another matter.

New every morning

Jeremiah wrote Lamentations in the ruins of a city, which matters for what he then says.

It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, King James Version)

They are new every morning.

You are walking through a house that is resupplied every single morning, and nothing on that sill has ever once been able to spend what was issued to you today. Lamentations 3:23 says his compassions are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman on her ninth crossing.

Now look at where Jeremiah is standing when he writes it. He is not in a good season. The book around this verse is the most sustained grief in the whole of scripture, and people are dead, and the city is down.

And in the middle of that, this. New every morning.

He is not saying things are fine. He is not saying it will turn. He is saying there is a fresh supply of mercy this morning that is not drawn from yesterday's account and is not reduced by yesterday's losses.

You were issued this morning's portion without any reference at all to how yesterday went, and no drop in your chest has ever once come out of that supply. The Spirit of God is what makes that a lived thing rather than a nice sentence, and Lamentations 3 is where it stands written.

What the glance is actually doing

Now the practical part, and it is about the second and a half after your eyes move.

The glance itself is automatic and you will not stop it. Peripheral vision registers a familiar shape and your eyes go, and that would happen if the plant were thriving too.

What is not automatic is the sentence.

Because after the glance there is a sentence, whether or not you hear it in words. Something like: still going. Or: that is worse. Or, most often and most costly: I am failing at this.

That sentence is where the drop comes from. Not from the leaves.

You have been paying a toll nine times a day for a sentence nobody made you say, and the plant has never once been the thing charging you. What is written in Lamentations 3 puts a new supply in front of you each morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a glance from a verdict.

Here is the other half, and it is the part that will actually help.

The reason the glance carries a verdict is that the plant has never once been looked at on purpose. Every look has been an interception, half a second, on the way somewhere else. And a half second look is exactly long enough to register decline and not long enough to register anything else.

So the fix is not to stop looking. It is to look properly, once, deliberately, and let the deliberate look be the one that counts.

You are able to give that plant one honest look a day, and a look you chose has never once cost you what nine accidental ones do. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a chosen thing lighter than an automatic one, and Lamentations 3:23 is the ground under it.

The crossing is yours

I want to say something about the room itself, because I think it has been quietly taken from you.

That is your kitchen. Your hallway. The route you walk to put the kettle on in your own home, several times a day, for years before there was a plant on that sill at all.

And right now a struggling plant is levying something on every one of those crossings.

That is too much authority for a pot. Not because the plant does not matter, but because the crossing matters more. A person should be able to go and make coffee in their own house without being assessed on the way.

You have lived in that room far longer than anything has stood on that sill, and no pot has ever once been handed the keys to your morning. Lamentations 3:23 says his compassions are new every morning, and the Spirit of God is the one who gives an ordinary walk back to a woman.

You are the one who lives in that room, and nothing standing in a window has ever once been given a say in how you cross it. The Spirit of God is the one who restores an ordinary walk to a woman, and it is written in Lamentations that the mercies are new every morning.

So the assignment has two halves, and the first half is the one that feels strange.

Cross the room once with your eyes forward.