The Jug She Went to Refill

The announcement comes between the second hymn and the passage, because Ruth cannot hold it any longer, and Ruth's husband is grinning at the carpet, and Ruth says, "We heard from the panel," and the room already knows before she finishes the sentence. Approved. After two years. Somebody actually shrieks. The man in the armchair by the radiator gets up to hug them and knocks the coffee table and three mugs slop and nobody cares. Twelve people in a front room built for six, and every one of them is on their feet.

She is on her feet too. She is the one who says, "That is wonderful, Ruth, that is so wonderful," and she means it in the part of her that forms sentences, and she hugs Ruth and holds on for the right length of time. And then she picks up the water jug from the coffee table, which is half full and does not need refilling, and she takes it to the kitchen, and she stands at the tap and lets it run.

Four years. That is how long she and her husband have been in the same process Ruth and her husband entered two years ago. Four years of forms and visits and a room in the house that has been painted twice and never used. She had prayed for Ruth. She had actually prayed for Ruth, in this same front room, out loud, and meant it. And now the thing she has been asking for has arrived on the sofa opposite hers, for somebody else, and the feeling that has come up in her at the sink is not one she has a polite word for. It is not that she wishes it had not happened. It is that she wanted it to be her, and it is not, and some cold arithmetic underneath is saying that there was one, and it went to Ruth.

You know that sink. It might not be an adoption and it might not be a front room, but you know the exact moment somebody you love received the thing you have been asking God for, and you said the right words, and you found a reason to leave the room, and you were ashamed of what you found in yourself when you got there. I am not going to tell you the envy is fine. I am going to tell you it is honest, and then I am going to read you what was actually taken out of your hands.

What was given, and what it was taken from

Let me name the weight before I touch it, because it is heavier than it looks. It is not only the envy. It is the shame about the envy, which is worse, because it means that in the moment you most needed to pray, you could not, because you did not want to bring that face to God. So you stood at the tap and let it run.

And underneath both is a piece of bad arithmetic that has never been said aloud, and I am going to say it for you, so we can look at it. It goes like this: there was a certain amount of blessing, and some of it went to them, and so there is less for me. As if God were a queue. As if favor were a jug that could be poured out on one sofa and be emptier for the next.

Now let me tell you what the word means, because this whole site exists to keep giving it back its meaning and I will not lean on the muddle for a paragraph. Blessed, in the Scriptures, is not the arrival of the item. It is God's face turned toward a person. It is His favor resting on somebody, and it rested, in the Sermon on the Mount, on the poor in spirit and the mourning and the persecuted, on people whose circumstances had not improved and did not improve by the end of the sentence. Ruth's approval is a good gift and I would not lower it by an inch. But it is not the blessing. The blessing is the face, and the face was turned toward you at the tap.

I read texts carefully for a living, and here is one that was spoken by a man whose disciples had just come to him with the news that somebody else had got the thing.

A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven.John 3:27

John the Baptist's followers had come to him with a complaint that reads, if you listen to it, exactly like the sink. Rabbi, the one you baptized, everyone is going to him now. And John's answer is not I do not mind. It is a sentence about where things come from. Nothing anybody has was taken from a common pile. It was given from heaven, to that person, by a Giver who does not run low.

You are looked on with favor tonight, and Ruth's yes did not lower it by a drop. I am not offering that as a nice thought. It is written that every good thing received is given from heaven, and the Holy Spirit is the One who gives to each one as He wills, from a hand that is not a queue and has never been. What went to them was theirs from Him. What is on you is yours from Him. The two are not in competition, because the two are not from the same jug.

He must increase, and the joy was complete

Read on in John 3, because the man does not stop at the arithmetic. He says: the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. He must increase, but I must decrease (John 3:29-30). Notice the order. He does not manufacture gladness and then explain it. He gets the arithmetic right first: nothing was taken from me. Then the joy arrives on its own, and it arrives full, at somebody else's wedding, with nothing added to his own hands.

I am not going to tell you to feel that yet. This site never requires you to be glad before it lets you go, and neither do I. But I want you to see the sequence, because it is the sequence you are in. First the correction of the count. Then, at His pace and not yours, the friend of the bridegroom starts to hear the voice and finds, to his own surprise, that he is glad.

You have been given the same standing John had: a friend of the Bridegroom, in Christ, with your own portion from His hand and nobody else's name on it. Paul writes that we are to rejoice with those who rejoice (Romans 12:15), and he writes it as a thing that is possible for people who are in Christ, not as a burden on people who are not, and it is His Spirit who grows it in a person, not their teeth gritted at a sink.

There is a moment on the shore in John 21 that belongs here too. Peter, restored, turns and sees John following, and says, Lord, what about this man? And Jesus says, what is that to you? You follow me (John 21:21-22). It is not a rebuke. It is a release. Peter's road was Peter's, and John's was John's, and the Lord would not let Peter carry a comparison down the beach. He will not let you carry one out of that front room either.

You are free to stop counting, right now, because the count was never real. Scripture says the gift comes from heaven and the Spirit apportions to each one individually as He wills (1 Corinthians 12:11), which means the arithmetic that says her yes is your no was never God's arithmetic. It was the sink's. And I am not saying that as a way of telling you your own asking has been answered. I have no word about your process and I will not pretend to. I am telling you what was in your hands before Ruth spoke and what is in them now, and it is the same, and it is His face.