I Have Been Discounting Small Things For Years

Somebody asked you last month when you last did anything together and you said not for ages.

And that was not a lie. You believed it entirely. It came out of your mouth as a plain fact about your household.

Then, driving home, you started remembering things. Sunday, when three of you were at the table for half an hour. The Tuesday before that with the two youngest. The morning before school that went on longer than it should have.

None of those had gone on the ledger. Not one of them.

Here is the accounting system you have been running, and you have never once looked at it: an evening counts if it was long, planned, and had everybody in it.

Everything else is filed as nothing. Not filed as small. Filed as nothing.

Which means a decade of short unplanned partial evenings has been subtracted from your own account of your own family, and the account you carry around is not accurate.

I am not going to tell you to feel better about your household. I am going to correct a ledger, and the correction is the article.

The least of all seeds

There is a parable that Jesus tells specifically about the problem of counting small things.

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs. (Matthew 13:31-32, King James Version)

The least of all seeds. He does not soften that. He names the smallness plainly and does not argue with it.

And the whole point is that the assessment at planting time is accurate and completely useless.

You are a parent with a decade she has not counted, and a small thing has never once been a thing that did not happen. Matthew 13:31 names something as the least of all seeds and then describes what it becomes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can correct a ledger without any charge against the accountant.

And notice that the smallness is not a problem to be overcome.

It is not that the seed becomes big despite being small. Small is what a seed is. That is the correct form for that stage, and anybody looking at it and seeing something insufficient is looking at a healthy seed and calling it a failure.

You have been calling a healthy thing insufficient, and a short evening has never once been an incomplete version of a long one. The Spirit of God is the one who corrects a category error rather than an attitude, and it is written in Matthew 13 that the least of all seeds becomes the greatest among herbs.

And there is no moment in that parable where the seed gets upgraded.

Nothing happens to it except time and ground. The same object that was the least of all seeds is the thing that ends up with birds in it.

You are able to count something now that will only look like something later, and a thing entered on the ledger tonight has never once needed to have grown first. It is written that it is the least of all seeds and becomes the greatest among herbs, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a person what they are actually holding.

What the ledger has cost

Now the practical part, because a wrong ledger is not just an inaccuracy.

You make decisions from it. When somebody suggests something and you think we never do anything, that thought comes from the ledger, and it produces tiredness rather than energy.

A person who believes their household has done nothing for months approaches an evening as a rescue. A person who knows there were eleven of them approaches it as the twelfth.

You have been starting from a deficit that does not exist, and an accurate count has never once needed anything to change except the counting. The Spirit of God is the one who changes what a person is standing on without changing anything else, and Matthew 13:31 puts the smallness and the greatness in the same object.

And your children have their own ledger, and it does not match yours.

They are not filing by length or attendance. A Tuesday morning that ran long is in their account as an event. The half hour at the table on Sunday is in there too.

Ask them and you will find they think this household does things, which is a strange conversation to have with somebody who thinks it does not.

You are living in a poorer version of your own household, and a family that has been together has never once needed the parent to have noticed for it to have happened. It is written in Matthew 13 that the greatness was in the seed the whole time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person see their own year accurately.

So the correction is not more evenings. It is counting the ones that occur.

You have enough already and have not been counting it, and a ledger that started counting has never once had to wait for anything new to happen. The Spirit of God is the one who does the correcting in an ordinary week, and Scripture names the least of all seeds without ever suggesting it should have been bigger.

Say it out loud once

Here is the instruction, and it is strange enough that it works.

Count tonight's twenty minutes as a real evening, out loud to yourself, once.

Say it. In an empty room, in an ordinary voice: that was an evening together.

You are able to enter something on a ledger by saying it, and one sentence said out loud has never once been a foolish thing to say about a true thing. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person names something accurately, and Matthew 13:31 names the seed as least and as greatest in one sentence.

And it has to be out loud, which is the part that will feel silly.

A thought about it will get absorbed by the old system, because the old system is made of thoughts and it is older and better established. A sentence in the air enters differently.

You have been arguing with a system using its own material, and something said aloud has never once been the same object as something thought. The Spirit of God is the one who works through a spoken thing, and it is written that He named the seed's size and its future in the same breath.

And do it every time for two weeks, which is about eleven entries.

At the end of that, ask yourself again when this household last did anything together, and listen to the answer, because it will be a different answer entirely and nothing will have changed except the counting.

You are able to change what you know about a year in two weeks, and eleven entries have never once been a small correction to make. It is written in Matthew 13 that the least of all seeds becomes the greatest among herbs, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in an ordinary running total.