Nothing Came In This Week

Nothing came in this week.

Not a small amount. Nothing. And the hours were there and the willingness was there and the asking was done, and the week produced a zero.

I want to go straight to the thing that happened afterward, because the zero is not actually what I am worried about.

What happened afterward is that you drew a conclusion. In the quiet, on Thursday night, without saying it to anybody. And the conclusion had God in it.

You are not being told something by an empty week, and a week with nothing in it has never once been a message.

Let me say what the conclusion usually is, and you can tell me whether it is close.

It is either: something is wrong with me, and He is at a distance because of it. Or: He is not paying attention to this part of my life. Or, worst and quietest: this is what He thinks I am worth.

Those are the three, roughly, and every one of them treats a week as a verdict handed down rather than as a week.

And I am not going to tell you the money comes next week. I do not know that. Nobody honest does.

What I want to do is take the conclusion apart, because you are going to be carrying it into next week otherwise, and it weighs more than the zero does.

The barrel of meal wasted not

There is a verse at the end of the widow of Zarephath's account, and the detail in it is the thing I want you to see.

And the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail, according to the word of the LORD, which he spake by Elijah. (1 Kings 17:16, King James Version)

The barrel of meal wasted not.

Not: the barrel was filled. Not: she was given a year's supply. The barrel did not empty, across a whole famine, while never at any point being full.

You are looking at a provision that was never visible as a surplus, and a container that stayed at the bottom has never once been a container that failed. 1 Kings 17:16 says and the barrel of meal wasted not, and the Holy Spirit is the one who described it that way rather than describing it filled.

And think about what that must have looked like from inside that house, every single morning.

It looked like almost nothing. Every day she went to it and there was enough for that day and no more, and there was no point at which she could have looked in and felt secure.

You have been reading a bottom of the barrel as an absence, and a supply that never once looked like plenty has never once been a supply that was not there. The Holy Spirit is the one who kept the account of a barrel rather than of a storehouse, and it is written in 1 Kings 17:16 that it did not waste across a whole famine.

What a week can and cannot tell you

Now let me handle the conclusion directly, because it is the actual subject of this article.

A week is a unit of time. It is seven days long and it has weather in it and other people's decisions in it and a thousand things in it that have nothing to do with you.

It is not a scorecard and it has never been issued as one.

You have been handed a report that was never written, and seven days of other people's timing has never once been a statement about a person. The written word records a barrel that did not empty without once describing how it looked, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a week from becoming a verdict.

And here is the second half, and it is the one I would most like to land.

The conclusion you drew on Thursday night was not drawn by a woman looking at evidence. It was drawn by a tired woman at eleven at night after a hard week, and tired people at eleven at night reach conclusions that they would not reach at ten in the morning.

That is not a failure of faith. It is what a nervous system does at the end of an empty week.

You are allowed to distrust a conclusion you reached at eleven at night, and a thought that arrived in the dark has never once been more accurate for having arrived there. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present at eleven at night and again at ten in the morning, and 1 Kings 17:16 is about a supply that could never be checked in advance.

Say it out loud anyway

So the assignment, and on a week like this one it is going to feel like a strange thing to be asked.

Name out loud what came in this week, however small, and thank God for it by name.

And I know what you are going to say, because the week was a zero.

So here is how it works on a week like this. Widen it by one notch. Not the money. What came in.

The lift somebody gave you. The bag of things from your sister. The fact that the thing you were dreading did not happen. The day that was easier than expected.

You are able to name what came in even in a week with a zero in the money column, and a list that is not made of money has never once been a dishonest list. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in something ordinary being named out loud, and the written word describes a barrel that held enough for a day without ever holding more.

And say the zero out loud too. Plainly. Nothing came in this week.

Because a thing said out loud to God is a different object from a thing concluded silently at eleven at night, and it is the silent ones that do the damage.

You are able to say the hard sentence out loud rather than conclude it in the dark, and a plain fact told to God has never once been the same as a verdict reached alone. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in that sentence, and it is written in 1 Kings 17:16 that the word held across the whole famine and not just across the good weeks.