It Came On The Worst Day Of The Week

Thursday was bad.

You do not need to go through it. It was the kind of bad where the individual items are not remarkable and the accumulation is, and by four in the afternoon you had stopped counting.

And you came in, and put your bag down, and there was new growth on the plant.

And something in you said, almost out loud: now. On this day of all days.

And you could not tell whether that was gratitude or something closer to bitterness, and you went and did the dishes.

So the thing to look at is not the leaf. It is the collision.

Something small and good arrived on a day with no room for it, and you did not know where to put it.

They are new every morning

Jeremiah writes from inside the ruins, which is the only reason the line is bearable.

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 supplied on a schedule that does not consult the day, and no Thursday has ever once been bad enough to stop what was issued that morning. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman putting a bag down in a hallway.

Notice that the timing is fixed and the conditions are not consulted.

New every morning. Not: new when things are going well. Not: new on the days with room for them. Every morning, which means they were issued on Thursday morning before any of it happened, and issued on the worst day of the year alongside every other day.

You were supplied before that Thursday began, and no day in a hard month has ever once arrived unaccompanied. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a fixed schedule a comfort rather than a technicality.

That is the only reason the leaf could arrive when it did. It was not timed to comfort you and it was not timed to mock you. It was simply on the same schedule it has always been on.

You were sent something that was never scheduled around your week, and a mercy that arrives at the wrong moment has never once been aimed at you unkindly. The Spirit of God is what makes that a relief rather than a coincidence, and Lamentations 3 is where the mornings are written down.

The collision and what to do with it

Now the practical half, and it is about that moment in the hallway.

Two things arrived at once and they did not fit together.

A day that had gone wrong in every direction, and one small green thing that had gone right. And a mind that is holding a bad day will do one of two things with a good thing that arrives in the middle of it.

It will reject it, as too small to matter against the rest. Or it will read it as pointed, as a kind of comment, arriving now to make the contrast sharper. The second one is what now, on this day of all days means.

You are not ungrateful, and reading a good thing as pointed on a day like that has never once been the response of a bitter woman. What is written in Lamentations 3:23 puts the mercies on a fixed schedule, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes the sense that something was aimed.

And here is the third option, which is the one nobody offers.

Neither reject it nor interpret it. Record it.

Put the two things beside each other and leave them there. Thursday was bad. There was new growth on the plant. Both true, neither canceling the other, no relationship between them that needs establishing.

You are able to hold two unrelated facts without making one of them mean something about the other, and a day with both in it has never once needed reconciling. The Spirit of God is the one who lets those two stand side by side, and Lamentations 3 is the ground under it.

Write the date down

So here is the instruction and it is the smallest one in this whole set.

Write down the date today, and next to it two words: it came.

That is all. On whatever is nearest. Back of an envelope, a note on your phone, the corner of a calendar.

And here is why writing rather than remembering. Because in three weeks Thursday will have dissolved into the general texture of a hard month, and so will the leaf, and neither will be available to you.

You have a memory that loses the small good things first, and that has never once been a sign that they were not worth keeping. Lamentations 3:23 issues them every morning regardless, and the Holy Spirit is the one who prompts a woman to write one down.

A date and two words means that in three weeks there is a piece of evidence that on the worst day of that week something arrived. Not a feeling about it. A record.

You are able to keep one piece of evidence from a day that had nothing else in it, and two written words have never once been too small to survive a bad month. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman writing three things on the back of an envelope.