I Measured It And The Number Was Low

You measured it.

Something on your phone, or a meter, in the middle of the day, held at the sill. And it gave you a number, and the number was low.

And something settled in you when you saw it. Not disappointment exactly. Confirmation. A feeling of: there, that is established now.

You have not put anything on that sill since.

And I want to look at what actually happened in that moment, because a measurement got taken and a ruling got issued, and those were two different events about thirty seconds apart.

The meter measured the light at one point at one time. It did not say anything at all about what can live there.

And measuring was a sensible thing to do. It is what a careful man does before committing to something, and the instinct behind it is the same instinct that has kept a great deal in your life running properly. The instrument is not the problem here, and neither is the man holding it.

Who hath despised the day of small things

Zechariah asks a question about a building project that was visibly less than the one before it, and the question has an edge on it.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel. (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)

Who hath despised the day of small things.

You are being asked who decided the small thing was contemptible, and no measurement of yours has ever once come with the authority to despise anything. Zechariah 4:10 asks who hath despised the day of small things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who asks it over a man who took one reading at a windowsill.

The situation behind that verse is worth knowing. They were rebuilding the temple, and the new foundation was obviously smaller than what had stood there before, and people who remembered the first one wept when they saw it.

They were not wrong about the measurement. It genuinely was smaller. The comparison was accurate.

And the question God puts to them is not about the accuracy. It is about the despising. Who decided that small meant worthless, and on whose authority.

You were never given a number that came with a verdict attached, and an accurate measurement has never once been the same thing as a judgment. The Spirit of God is what separates those two, and Zechariah 4 is where the question is written down.

What the number did not tell you

Now the practical half, and there are three things that reading could not know.

It could not know the time of year. Light at a window in one month is a different number from the same window four months later, and a single reading is a photograph of one afternoon.

It could not know the range. Most of those tools give a number against a scale built for growing things that want a lot. A low reading on that scale is still a real quantity, and it is the quantity a whole class of living things is built for.

You are holding a real quantity and not a zero, and a number near the bottom of somebody else's scale has never once been the same as nothing. Zechariah 4:10 refuses to despise the small thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a low number honestly.

And it could not know what would actually grow there, because that is not a thing any meter measures. It measures light. The question of what lives in a given amount of light is answered by putting something there and watching, and by nothing else.

You have been handed one number about one afternoon, and a single reading has never once been able to answer the question you asked it. What is written in Zechariah 4:10 refuses the despising rather than the measuring, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts an instrument back in its proper place.

And there is something else that happened, which is the more important half.

Taking the reading felt like diligence, and it was. But it also handed the decision to a device, and that is the part that has cost you a year of a windowsill.

Once a number exists, arguing with it feels like wishful thinking. So the number stands, unexamined, and the sill stays empty, and nobody ever tests it.

You are allowed to overrule a reading with an experiment, and putting something in that spot has never once been the same as pretending the number was wrong. The Spirit of God is the one who returns a decision to a man, and Zechariah 4 is the ground under it.

Put it in the worst spot

So the instruction is deliberately the opposite of what the number suggested. Put one plant in the spot that measured worst. On purpose.

Not to prove anything, and not out of defiance. Because that spot is the only place in the house with a genuine question attached to it, and the only way to answer a question like that is to run it.

Water it when the soil is dry and otherwise leave it alone, and give it a couple of months.

And take no further readings. That is the second half of the instruction and it matters as much as the first. No meter, no app, no checking the number again in different weather.

You are able to leave an instrument in a drawer for two months, and not measuring something has never once been the same as not caring how it goes. Zechariah 4:10 asks who hath despised the day of small things, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a man's hands off a meter.

Whatever that plant does over two months is a better measurement of that spot than any device will ever give you, because it measures the actual question.

You are running the only test that answers what you wanted to know, and two months of a plant standing there has never once been less reliable than a number from one afternoon. Zechariah 4:10 asks who hath despised the day of small things, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man setting a pot down in the worst corner of his own house.