The First Thing On The New Windowsill

The boxes are still in the hall.

Three of them are labeled in a way that made sense on the day and means nothing now. The kitchen is mostly done. There is a room you have not really entered except to put things in it.

And you have this idea, which you have not said out loud, about one plant on the new windowsill.

You keep not doing it. Because it feels like something that comes later, after the unpacking, when the place is actually set up, when it would be a finishing touch rather than one more object in an unfinished house.

And under that, quieter, is the other thing.

The last place had plants. And you know how that went, and starting again here feels like starting the same story again in a different room.

Plant gardens and eat the fruit

Jeremiah writes a letter to people who have just been moved somewhere they did not choose, and the instruction is oddly domestic.

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them. (Jeremiah 29:5, King James Version)

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens.

You are being told to put something in the ground of the place you are actually in, and the temporariness of a house has never once been a reason to hold off. Jeremiah 29:5 says plant gardens and eat the fruit of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over somebody standing in a hall full of boxes.

Understand who is being written to. These are people in exile, in a city they did not pick, expecting to be there a while and hoping not to be.

And the word is not: hold on, keep your bags packed, do not get attached. The word is: build, dwell, plant, eat.

Plant is the interesting one. Planting is the least portable act there is. You cannot take a garden with you, and the word tells them to do it anyway.

You have been given permission to sink something into a place you are not sure about, and nothing in that letter has ever once required a settled feeling first. The Spirit of God is what makes that a real instruction rather than a nice sentiment, and Jeremiah 29 is where the planting is written down.

Before the unpacking, not after

Now the practical half, and it is an argument about order.

A plant on the sill of a house that is still in boxes does something a plant in a finished house cannot do.

It makes the place inhabited. Not decorated. Inhabited, which is a different word and a bigger one. A room with a living thing in it is a room somebody lives in, even if the shelves are not up.

Whereas a plant that arrives at the end, once everything is in place, is an ornament. It is the last item on a list, and it means nothing except that the list is finished.

You are holding the one item on that whole list that changes what the room is, and an ornament has never once been able to do that job. Jeremiah 29:5 puts the planting beside the dwelling, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a half done room a home.

So the order is not a detail. Doing it now is the whole point of doing it.

You are able to make a half unpacked house inhabited today, and the boxes in the hall have never once made that less true. What is written in Jeremiah 29:5 puts the planting alongside the dwelling rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an unfinished room a home before the last box is emptied.

And it does something for you as well, which is the part people underestimate.

Unpacking is a long list of reversible tasks. Every one of them can be undone, redone, second guessed. A living thing on a sill is the one item in that house that is not admin. It is the only thing in the place that is going to do anything on its own.

You are surrounded by tasks and you have almost nothing living in that house yet, and one small green thing has never once been merely decorative in a week like this. The Spirit of God is the one who knows what a week of boxes does to a person, and Jeremiah 29 is the ground under the planting.

This is not the same story

And now the quieter thing, which has to be said plainly.

The last place had plants and some of them did not make it, and there is a feeling that putting one on this sill is queuing up the same outcome in a new room.

That is worth taking seriously rather than waving off.

You are carrying a real memory and not a superstition, and taking that seriously has never once been the same as being ruled by it. Jeremiah 29:5 speaks to people who had every reason to keep their bags packed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference between a caution and a sentence.

But look at what is actually different. Different light. Different air. Different routine, and routine is most of it. And a different person, because the stretch that ended with that move changed things that are still being counted.

The old outcome was produced by a whole set of conditions, and nearly all of them are in the past tense now.

You are not resuming anything, and a new room has never once been obliged to finish the story an old one started. Jeremiah 29:5 tells people to plant in the place they are in now, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a continuity nobody actually signed up for.