Not Because I Squared It

The kitchen is full and the music is on and there is a woman standing by the stove who has not sat down all evening, and that woman is Yvonne and she has not sat down at anything in about four years.

Everybody thinks it is hospitality. It is not really hospitality, although she is good at it and the food is excellent.

What it is, and she said this out loud for the first time in June to a woman called Bunmi who was drying a bowl, is that she has been trying to get level.

Four years ago something happened that she does not discuss. Not a crime and not a scandal. A period of about eight months in which she was, by her own account, not the person she wants to be, and in which several people carried her and she was not gracious about it and one relationship has not recovered.

She came out the other side. She is fine. Everybody says how well she is doing and she is doing well.

And she has been paying it back ever since. Not to the people. She has apologized to the people and most of that is done and it was received well.

She has been paying it back upward.

The Thursdays. The lifts. The being the one who does the thing nobody else does. The specific and quiet decision, made about three and a half years ago and never once revisited, that she would not properly enjoy anything until she had got herself square with God.

Bunmi put the bowl down and said, "Square on what basis?"

Yvonne said what.

And Bunmi said: "You are trying to get level. Level with what number? What is the amount?"

And Yvonne stood in her own kitchen with a room full of people behind her and could not produce one.

You may be paying something back upward too. It is rarely dramatic and it almost never gets said out loud, and it usually looks from the outside like somebody being good. And the specific thing about it is that there is no number, and there was never going to be one, and nobody has ever asked you to name it.

The Basis Is Stated Twice, Negatively And Then Positively

There is a sentence in Titus that is built in two halves on purpose, and the first half exists to close a door.

"Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost."Titus 3:5

Not by works of righteousness which we have done.

That is the first half, and notice what it rules out. Not bad works. Not failures. Works of righteousness. The good ones. The Thursdays and the lifts and the being the one who does the thing nobody else does.

Paul goes out of his way to specify that the good ones are not the basis, which he would not have needed to do unless people were going to try it.

You have been attempting the exact thing the sentence rules out by name. Titus 3 closes the door on works of righteousness before it opens the other one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes that and stands it by a stove in a full kitchen with the music on.

And then the second half. According to His mercy He saved us. That is the basis, stated positively, and mercy is a word that only functions where nothing is being balanced. You cannot receive mercy on an account that is level. The whole word depends on the sum being unfinished and somebody deciding it does not matter.

You were saved on a basis that requires the account to be open rather than closed. That is what the written word says about how it actually happened, and it is the Spirit of God who makes a two part sentence land in a woman who cannot name the number she has been working toward.

There Is No Number And Nothing Here Adds One

Now say it plainly, because this is the landing category and how these pages end is the whole guarantee of this site.

There is no amount. There was never an amount. Nobody has ever calculated one and there is no ledger anywhere with a figure at the bottom of it waiting to be reached.

And nothing here asks you for anything. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no schedule, no commitment, no next step, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere at all, this one included.

You will not finish this page with a payment plan. The Thursdays are not being taken off you either; they are good and the people who get the lifts are glad of them, and nothing here asks anybody to stop being kind.

It is only that the kindness is not a repayment, and it never was, and it cannot be, because there is no account open on that side.

You have not been in arrears for four years. It is written that not by works of righteousness which we have done, and the door it closes is the one you have been trying, and His Spirit is the one who has been in that kitchen every Thursday of the four years.

And you are as fully His sitting down as standing by the stove, because mercy only operates where nothing is level, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page from writing a figure at the bottom.