I Over Corrected The Following Year

The first year was a small thing.

You got it wrong. It happens. Her face did what a face does and then she was warm about it and the afternoon carried on and, honestly, by February it had almost gone.

Almost. It sat in you all year at about the level of a stone in a shoe.

So the following year you fixed it.

You went large. Considerably large. You thought about it for weeks and you spent what you spent and you handed it over and you watched.

And it was too much. Everybody in the room felt it, including her, and there was a moment where the size of it turned into a question, and the question was: what is this for.

And now you have two years to carry instead of one, and the second one is much louder than the first.

There is a line in Isaiah about how God handles something already bent, and it is the exact opposite of what you did.

A bruised reed shall he not break

Here it is.

A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench. (Isaiah 42:3, King James Version)

Two pictures, and both of them are about things that are barely holding on.

A bruised reed is a stalk that has been crushed somewhere along its length. It is still standing but it is compromised, and the smallest additional pressure finishes it.

Smoking flax is a wick that has gone out and is still glowing. There is almost nothing left in it. One breath in the wrong direction and it is over.

You have been handling something bruised, and the Holy Spirit is the one who chose two fragile pictures rather than two broken ones. Isaiah 42:3 describes a handling with no force in it rather than a repair, and the difference is that both of these are still alive.

Now the verbs, because they are what the verse is actually about.

Shall not break. Shall not quench. Both negative. The whole description of how God handles the fragile thing is a list of what He does not do to it.

That is a remarkable way to describe care. No action is named at all. Only restraint.

You have been shown a care made entirely of restraint, and it is written that He shall not break and shall not quench rather than that He mends and relights. The Spirit of God is the one who wrote care that way, and it is the opposite of every instinct a man has about fixing.

And here is what it says about pressure.

A bruised reed does not need force. Force is the one thing it cannot survive. Whatever is going to happen to that reed, it happens by being left alone in the right conditions, and any application of strength finishes it.

You have been putting weight on the one thing that could not take weight, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a man's hands off something. Scripture names the not breaking as the whole of the kindness, and taking the hands off is harder for a man than almost anything else.

What a large gift actually said

Now let me name what happened in that room, because it will help to see it from her side.

A gift that is far too large does not read as generosity. It reads as a statement, and everybody in a room can hear a statement.

What it said was: something needs putting right here. And until that moment, nobody in that room had thought anything needed putting right.

You have announced a problem that had almost gone, and it is written that the bruised reed is not to be broken rather than that it must be addressed. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a man see what an act actually communicated, and it is nearly always different from what it meant.

And here is the mechanism, and it is worth understanding because it will stop you doing it again.

The first miss was a small event with a small meaning. The correction was a large act, and large acts carry large meanings, and a large meaning cannot be attached to a small event without the whole thing becoming strange.

You did not fix a proportion. You broke one.

You have been trying to solve a small thing at a large scale, and the Holy Spirit is the one who restores a proportion. The written word handles the fragile at the smallest possible scale, and He restores it by asking a man to do less rather than more.

And one thing about her, said plainly.

She had almost certainly forgotten the first one. Most people do. What she has now is not one memory but a strange second afternoon, and the second one is entirely made of your effort to remove the first.

You are the only person carrying both of these, and it is written that the smoking flax is not quenched rather than that it is fussed over. The Spirit of God is the one who knows exactly how much anybody else is holding, and in this case it is almost nothing.

Do nothing large this year

So here is what to do, and it is going to feel like giving up.

Give something entirely ordinary. Ordinary in size, ordinary in effort, indistinguishable from what you would have given in a year where none of this had happened.

Do not go small either, because small is also a statement and everybody would hear that one too.

You are aiming at ordinary rather than at correct, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes ordinary the healing thing. Isaiah 42:3 handles the fragile by declining to act on it rather than by adjusting, and it is the only setting on the dial that says nothing at all.

And repair nothing with it.

Do not build in an acknowledgment. Do not make it quietly reference the first year. Do not choose something that could be read, by somebody who knew, as a response.

Nobody knows. That is the thing to hold onto. There is no audience for the correction because there was never a scandal.

You have nothing to answer for in that room, and it is written that He shall not break and shall not quench rather than that He explains Himself. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a two year project quietly, and quietly is the only way this one can end.

And then, and this is the discipline, do not watch.

Hand it over, look at her, and then go and talk to somebody else. Do not read the face. Do not compare it with either of the last two. Do not run the tape on the drive home.

You are finished the moment you stop reading her, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a man's hands off a thing that was going to be fine. His word puts the whole of the care into restraint, and it was going to be fine.