I Told Somebody And They Said Oh

You said it lightly.

Which was already a compromise, because it did not feel light. You had been looking at it for two days and the thing you actually wanted to say was closer to: something good happened this week and it was a leaf.

So you said the small version. There is a new leaf on my plant.

And she said oh. And then she said something about her weekend.

And you moved on, and the conversation was completely fine, and you have thought about it four times since, which tells you it was not fine at all.

So let me say what happened, because it was not what you concluded.

Nothing was rejected in that moment, and the thing you decided afterward was not the information you were given.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice

Paul gives a short instruction in Romans that is aimed at both halves of exactly this exchange.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. (Romans 12:15, King James Version)

Rejoice with them that do rejoice.

You are looking at something the written word has to instruct people to do, and a person who did not do it has never once been giving you a verdict on your news. Romans 12:15 says rejoice with them that do rejoice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has been thinking about the word oh for four days.

Ask why it has to be commanded at all.

Weeping with people who weep is instinctive for most of us. Somebody is in trouble and something in a person turns toward them without being asked.

And rejoicing with people who rejoice is not like that. It has to be learned, it is frequently missed, and it is missed by kind people who are thinking about something else, which is precisely why it appears in scripture as an instruction rather than as a description.

You were not given information about your news by that oh, and a missed instruction in somebody else has never once been a comment on the thing you said. The Spirit of God is what makes that available rather than merely logical, and Romans 12 is where the rejoicing is commanded.

What you concluded and what happened

Now the practical half, and it is about the four days since. What happened is that a person said oh and changed the subject.

What you concluded is that the gladness was disproportionate, that saying it out loud had confirmed that, and that you should have kept it to yourself.

Those are not the same thing, and the distance between them is enormous, and it was all covered in about two seconds.

She was thinking about her weekend. That is the actual content of that moment. There is no other content in it.

You have been reading meaning into a gap where there was no meaning at all, and a distracted second has never once been a message about the plant on your sill. Romans 12:15 commands the rejoicing because it is constantly missed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who empties an ordinary moment of a verdict.

You have built a conclusion out of two seconds of somebody's attention, and one distracted response has never once contained a judgment of anything. What is written in Romans 12:15 asks for rejoicing because it does not happen by itself, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a verdict out of an ordinary exchange.

And here is the thing about what you actually wanted, which is worth saying plainly.

You were not asking for a reaction, and the thing you actually did was braver than asking has ever once been. Romans 12:15 commands the rejoicing precisely because it is missed, and the Spirit of God is the one who names the courage in a small spoken sentence.

Saying a true thing about a small good week out loud to another person is a real act, and it was completed the moment it was said.

The saying is what you wanted. The response was a hoped for extra, and when it did not come the whole act got retroactively rewritten as a mistake.

You are the one who did the thing that mattered in that conversation, and somebody else's answer has never once been what made a spoken sentence real. The Spirit of God is the one who protects the saying from the reply, and Romans 12 is the ground under it.

Say it to an empty room

So here is the instruction and it is deliberately built to involve nobody.

Say it out loud once more today, in a room with nobody in it.

There is a new leaf on my plant and I was glad about it.

Out loud, at a normal volume, to nothing. And then stop, and do not add a clause, and do not wait for anything.

You are able to say it with nobody there to answer it, and a sentence that receives no reply has never once been a sentence that failed. Romans 12:15 asks other people to rejoice with you, and the Holy Spirit is the one already doing it while you speak.

And here is why an empty room rather than another person. Because the last one came back with an answer attached and the answer took it over. An empty room cannot do that. There is nothing to receive it and therefore nothing that can modify it, and the sentence is allowed to be exactly what you said and nothing else. That returns the act to you. Which is where it was on Tuesday, before anybody said anything.

You are able to say a true thing with nobody there to grade it, and a sentence spoken to an empty room has never once been a smaller sentence. Romans 12:15 asks other people to rejoice with you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does it whether or not anybody else manages it.