I Top It Up Every Time I Walk Past

It is not really watering.

That is the thing that has made this hard to see. You do not water that plant. You top it up, which is a completely different act, and it happens in about two seconds on the way to something else.

A splash from the glass you are rinsing. A bit from the kettle. A quick one from the tap while you are standing there anyway.

And none of those feel like anything. They are not decisions. They are barely actions.

But you cross that kitchen eleven times a day, and if even half of those come with a splash, that pot is receiving something five or six times daily, every day, from a person who would tell you honestly that she waters it about twice a week.

So the first thing is simply to see it.

You are not overwatering once. You are overwatering in pieces so small that none of them registers.

Let no man leave of it till the morning

There is an instruction in Exodus about the manna that is strange until you see what it is training.

And Moses said, Let no man leave of it till the morning. Notwithstanding they hearkened not unto Moses; but some of them left of it until the morning, and it bred worms, and stank. (Exodus 16:19-20, King James Version)

Let no man leave of it till the morning.

You are being taught a rhythm rather than a quantity, and no arrangement God gives has ever once been improved by adding a little more to it. Exodus 16:19 says let no man leave of it till the morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman crossing her kitchen for the sixth time today.

Look at what was actually being trained there. It was not generosity and it was not discipline exactly.

It was the ability to receive a day's portion and then stop. To take what was given, use it, and not carry the anxiety forward into tomorrow by hoarding against it.

And the ones who could not stop were not wicked. They were afraid. Anybody who has been hungry stores food, and that is not a character defect, it is a reasonable response to an unreliable world.

You were never rebuked for the instinct behind this, and storing up against a fear has never once been the same as greed. The Spirit of God is what turns that story into something usable, and Exodus 16 is where the rhythm is written down.

What a splash actually does

Now the practical half, and it is very short.

Soil that is topped up constantly never dries. And soil that never dries has no air in it, and roots need air, and roots sitting in airless wet soil begin to fail. That is the mechanism, and it is the whole of it.

But the important part is not the botany. It is that a plant given a proper drink and then left to dry out is in a rhythm, and a plant that gets a splash six times a day is in no rhythm at all. It is the same distinction Exodus is making.

Not more or less. A rhythm of receiving and then stopping, against a constant low level topping up that never resolves.

You are able to give that pot a rhythm today, and putting an ending into something that has been running all day has never once been a withdrawal of care. Exodus 16:19 sets a portion and a stop, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an ending possible.

You are able to give that pot a rhythm today, and an ending put into something that has been running all day has never once been a withdrawal of care. Exodus 16:19 sets a portion and a stop, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an ending possible.

You are able to give it a rhythm instead of a trickle, and a plant that dries out between drinks has never once been a plant that is being neglected. What is written in Exodus 16:19 sets a portion and an end to it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ending possible.

And here is the part underneath, because the splash is not about the plant either.

Passing something you care about and doing nothing feels wrong. That is the whole engine. Two seconds of pouring is what converts an ordinary crossing into a small act of care, and a woman who crosses her kitchen eleven times a day gets eleven opportunities to have done something.

You are reaching for a way to have cared on each crossing, and that impulse has never once been the thing that needed correcting in you. The Spirit of God is the one who says that without a word of blame, and Exodus 16 is the ground under it.

Five crossings with empty hands

So here is the instruction and it is built for exactly this.

Cross that kitchen five times today without pouring anything. And count them on your fingers.

Not all day. Five. The counting is not a discipline tool, it is the opposite: it gives you something to do on the crossing, so the crossing is not empty.

That is the whole trick. The splash exists because a crossing with nothing in it feels like a waste, and putting a count in your hand fills the same slot at no cost to the plant. Five fingers. When you get to five, stop counting and go about your day.

You have a hand that wanted a job and has now been given one, and a count held on five fingers has never once been beneath a grown woman. The Holy Spirit is the one who meets somebody in a habit rather than in a resolution, and Exodus 16:19 is the written ground under the ending.

You are able to give a crossing something to hold that is not a splash, and a number counted on your fingers has never once been a foolish way to change a habit. Exodus 16:19 sets an end to a day's portion, and the Holy Spirit is the one with you on the third crossing when your hand goes toward the tap.