There Is Water Standing In The Saucer

You top the saucer up.

Not the soil. The saucer underneath, the shallow dish the pot stands in, and you keep a little water in it at all times, and you have never articulated why.

If pressed you would say something about humidity, and there is a version of that which is true, but it is not the reason.

The reason is that an empty saucer looks like a plant that nobody is looking after.

And a saucer with a bit of water in it looks like a plant that is being cared for, and it looks that way to you, several times a day, as you pass.

So the thing to say first is about the looking rather than the water.

That saucer is a display, and the audience is you.

Broken cisterns that can hold no water

Jeremiah records God naming two things at once, and the second one is a picture that has stayed with people for thousands of years.

For my people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water. (Jeremiah 2:13, King James Version)

Broken cisterns, that can hold no water.

You are being shown something that looks like provision and holds nothing, and no standing water has ever once been the same as something living being supplied. Jeremiah 2:13 says broken cisterns, that can hold no water, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman topping up a saucer.

Look at how much work went into the cisterns. Hewed them out. That is cutting into rock by hand, in heat, over weeks.

Nobody in that verse is lazy. The whole complaint is about enormous effort producing a thing that does not do what it was built for, and the alternative is a fountain, which requires no work at all and was already there.

You are being spoken to about a method and never about your character, and hard work aimed at the wrong thing has never once made anybody negligent. Jeremiah 2:13 names the cisterns and not the workers, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps that distinction.

That is a difficult thing to hear when the effort is real, and it is meant to be.

You were never accused of idleness, and effort that produces nothing has never once been the same as no effort at all. The Spirit of God is what makes that land without crushing anybody, and Jeremiah 2 is where the cisterns are written down.

What standing water does

Now the practical half, and it is short and it matters.

A pot standing in water cannot drain. Drainage is the whole point of a hole in the bottom of a pot, and a saucer with water in it seals that hole with water.

So the lowest soil stays saturated, and the roots down there, which are the main roots, sit in it permanently.

You have one movement available that changes the whole arrangement, and tipping a dish out has never once been too small an act to matter to a plant. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a small movement worth making, and Jeremiah 2:13 is the written ground under it.

That is the one arrangement that reliably finishes a healthy plant, and it is being maintained by somebody who is trying to look after it.

You have been running the one condition that a plant genuinely cannot survive, and doing it out of care has never once been what anybody would call carelessness. What is written in Jeremiah 2:13 names hard work that produces nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman that gently enough to be heard.

And the humidity idea, since it deserves an honest answer.

Standing water in a saucer does raise humidity very slightly in the inch or so directly above it. That effect is real and it is tiny, and it is nothing beside the cost of a pot that cannot drain. If a plant wants damper air it wants a damper room, not a wet dish.

You are allowed to have believed a reasonable thing that turns out to be small, and holding a half true idea has never once meant you were not paying attention. The Spirit of God is the one who corrects a fact without correcting a person, and Jeremiah 2 is the ground under it.

Nobody is reading it

So the instruction is one movement, and the second half is the part that makes it stick.

Tip the saucer out today. Lift the pot, pour the water away, put the pot back on a dry dish.

And then leave it empty. Not once. Not a little bit on Sunday. Empty.

And here is the part to hold onto when you walk past it, because there will be something to feel on the first few passes.

You have three uncomfortable days in front of you, and that discomfort has never once been a sign that you got this wrong. Jeremiah 2:13 names the thing that holds nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who walks a woman past a dry dish.

Nobody is reading that saucer. Nobody has ever looked at it. The audience for that display has been one person, and the verdict being avoided several times a day was issued by the same person it lands on. An empty saucer is not a message about you. It is a saucer that a plant can drain into.

You are free to let something look unattended, and a dry dish has never once said one word about the woman who lives in that house. Jeremiah 2:13 names the thing that holds nothing, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman walking past an empty saucer for the fourth time.