It Was My Father's And I Do Not Know What He Did

He never said anything about it.

That is the thing you keep coming back to. In all those years there was never a conversation about that plant. It was just there, on the same shelf, doing whatever it did, and he watered it at some point that you never once witnessed.

And now it is on your shelf, and it is not doing what it did.

And you have been trying to work out what he did. Going back through it, looking for a memory of him with a watering can, wondering whether it was Sundays, whether he put something in the water, whether the shelf mattered.

There is nothing there. You are searching a file that does not exist.

So let me start there, because the searching is costing more than the plant is.

There was never a method. There was a man in a room with a plant for thirty years.

I will not fail thee nor forsake thee

Joshua takes over from Moses, which is about as hard an act to follow as exists, and God says one specific thing to him.

There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. (Joshua 1:5, King James Version)

As I was with Moses, so I will be with thee.

You are being told that the same presence goes with the one who comes after, and no man has ever once been asked to reproduce the one who went before him. Joshua 1:5 says as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man holding a plant his father kept.

Notice carefully what is promised and what is not.

He is not told he will be Moses. He is not told he will do it the way Moses did it, or that he will find Moses's notes, or that somebody will explain the method.

He is told the presence is the same. The person is different, the approach will be different, and the accompaniment does not change.

You have the same company your father had, and the difference in the hands has never once altered who goes with them. Joshua 1:5 says I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that true for the one who comes after.

And Joshua's way of doing things turned out to be nothing like Moses's way, and the record does not treat that as a failure anywhere.

You were never handed an obligation to do it his way, and a different hand on the same task has never once been a betrayal of the man who had it first. The Spirit of God is what makes that reach a son, and Joshua 1 is where the presence is written down.

There was probably nothing to know

Now the practical half, and I say this with some confidence.

Your father almost certainly had no method.

A plant that sits in the same place for years with somebody in the house is not being managed. It is being lived alongside. He watered it when he thought of it, or when he was at the sink anyway, or when it looked like it wanted some.

If you had asked him, he would have said something unhelpful, like: I do not know, I just water it. And he would have been telling the truth.

You are chasing an answer that would have disappointed you even if he had given it, and the plainness of that has never once meant he kept anything back. Joshua 1:5 says I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a plain answer be enough.

You have been looking for a technique that was never once in that house, and the absence of it has never once been a thing your father withheld from you. What is written in Joshua 1:5 promises presence rather than method, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a search in an empty file.

And here is the other half, which matters more.

That plant was in his room, at his temperature, with his light, on his schedule of being home. It is now in a completely different building with a different person.

There is no version of this where it carries on exactly as it did, and that has nothing to do with what you know or do not know. The conditions changed entirely on the day it moved.

You are tending a different situation than the one he had, and a plant behaving differently in a new house has never once been a comment on the son who moved it. The Spirit of God is the one who says that plainly, and Joshua 1 is the ground under it.

Water it your own way

So here is the instruction, and it is a subtraction.

Water it your own way, today. Whatever you do for the rest of them, do that.

And stop looking for what he did. Actively stop. When the wondering starts, and it will start, let it come and do not follow it into the search.

Because there is a version of this that runs for two years, reconstructing a man from a plant, ending exactly where it started, with two years of a relationship with a father spent inside a fruitless archive.

You are free to leave that archive shut, and closing a search has never once been the same as closing a door on him. Joshua 1:5 promises the presence and not the method, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a dig kindly.

What you actually have of him is not a technique. It is thirty years of a man in a room with a living thing on a shelf, which he never mentioned and never made a thing of, and which he apparently just did.

You have the whole of what he handed over already, and none of it has ever once been the kind of thing that gets written down. Joshua 1:5 promises presence rather than instructions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a son hold an inheritance he cannot itemize.

That is a whole inheritance and it is already yours.

You are already holding what he actually passed on, and none of it has ever once depended on you finding out what he did on Sundays. Joshua 1:5 says I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a son stop excavating.