It Was From Someone I No Longer Speak To

He gave it to you at a point when things were still fine.

Which is the part that makes it awkward. It is not a thing from a dead person, where the difficulty is grief. It is from a man who is alive, forty minutes away, whom you have not spoken to in two years.

And it is on your shelf.

And every time you water it, something quiet happens. Some weeks it feels like a lie, as though keeping his plant alive is pretending nothing happened. Other weeks it feels like a debt, as though the plant is an outstanding item on an account neither of you will open.

And on the worst weeks you consider getting rid of it, and then that feels like a statement too, and so nothing changes.

So here is the thing to establish first.

The plant is not a message and it has never once been in the conversation.

As much as lieth in you

Paul writes one sentence about peace with people, and every clause in it is a limitation.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. (Romans 12:18, King James Version)

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you.

You are under an instruction with two limits written into it, and no command about peace has ever once been laid on you without them. Romans 12:18 says if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man watering a plant he has complicated feelings about.

Count the qualifications, because there are two and both are enormous.

If it be possible. Which concedes immediately that sometimes it is not, and does not explain or apologize for that.

As much as lieth in you. Which limits the whole thing to your own half, and says nothing at all about what the other man does or does not do.

That is the most carefully bounded command in the letter, and the boundaries are there because Paul knew exactly what he was asking of people.

You were given a command with your own half clearly marked, and nothing in that verse has ever once made you responsible for the other side of a silence. The Spirit of God is what keeps that from being an excuse, and Romans 12 is where the limits are written down.

The plant is not a party to this

Now the practical half, and it is a separation.

There are two things here and they have nothing to do with each other.

There is a relationship between two men that has been quiet for two years, which is real and which may or may not change, and about which Romans has already told you your half and your half only.

And there is a plant on a shelf, which has been in your house the whole time, which he almost certainly has not thought about once since he handed it over, and which is a living thing that needs water.

You have been treating the second one as a signal about the first, and it is not. It cannot be. He does not know whether it lives. Nobody is receiving any message.

You are not sending anybody anything when you water that, and a pot on your shelf has never once been visible from where he is standing. What is written in Romans 12:18 limits you to your own half, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates a living thing from a silence between two men.

And the reverse is also worth saying, because it is where the guilt sits.

Keeping it forgives nothing that has not already been forgiven. Watering it agrees with nothing. It is not a small weekly act of pretending things are fine.

You are free to hold both of those at once, and tending something a man gave you has never once been a concession made to him. Romans 12:18 marks out your own half and stops there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps an ordinary act from becoming a statement.

You can water that plant every week for ten years and still be exactly as far from that man as you are now, and nothing about the watering commits you to a single thing.

You are free to keep it without it conceding anything, and ninety seconds a week has never once been an agreement with anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who takes a meaning off an ordinary act, and Romans 12 is the ground under it.

Say it out loud

So here is the instruction, and it is almost entirely about what you say while you do it.

Water it today. And say out loud: this does not mean anything.

Five words, in your ordinary voice, in the room.

And here is why that works. The thing that has been costing you is not the watering. It is the small unsettled negotiation that runs in your head every time, which has never been resolved because it has never been spoken and cannot be resolved by thinking.

You have been paying for an argument nobody else is having, and two years of running it silently has never once brought it one step closer to a finish. Romans 12:18 marks your own half, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man rule out loud.

Saying it out loud ends the negotiation. It puts a ruling into the room, from you, about your own shelf. And then the plant is a plant and the other thing is the other thing, and the other thing can be dealt with, or not, on its own terms and in its own time, which is where Romans left it anyway.

You are able to rule on your own shelf out loud, and five words said to nobody has never once been a strange way for a man to settle something. Romans 12:18 says as much as lieth in you, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing with a man saying something plain in an empty room.