The Page Got Wet And I Panicked

It was a cup and it was two inches from the edge.

You had it in your hand and it went, and what you thought about before the cup even landed was the page on the counter.

You got the page. It was damp along one edge and one line had gone soft and you could still read it, and that was the whole of the incident, and it took about four seconds.

And then you stood there.

Not because of the mess. Because in those four seconds you had understood something you had never let yourself think before, and you have not been able to put it back down since.

Everything is on that page. Every way into everything. And there is one of it.

That is what you saw. Not a wet corner. The whole arrangement of your ordinary life resting on one sheet of paper on a countertop in a kitchen, with a cup two inches from the edge.

I am not going to give you a lecture about that. You have already had the lecture and you gave it to yourself standing there with a cloth in your hand. What I am going to do is something better.

Founded upon a rock

There is an image at the end of a long sermon about two houses, and the interesting part is what the two have in common.

And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. (Matthew 7:25, King James Version)

The rain descended on both houses. The floods came to both. The wind beat on both.

The weather is identical in the two halves of the story. What differs is what is underneath.

You are founded on something the weather has already been tested against, and no storm in the story has ever once been kept away from the house that stood. Matthew 7:25 says the rain descended, and the floods came, and it fell not, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that solid for a woman who has just found out what she has been resting on.

Notice that the standing house is not promised calm. It is promised a foundation. Those are different promises and only one of them is available.

That matters here, because you are not going to be promised that nothing ever gets wet.

You have a promise about the foundation and never one about the weather, and no house in that story has ever once been offered a life without rain. The Holy Spirit is the one who tells the difference between a promise of calm and a promise of footing, and it is written that the rain came down on both.

And there is the word founded, which is the whole hinge. The house that stood had somebody do work underneath it before the storm arrived.

That is not a mystical thing. It is an ordinary act done in advance, on a fine day, by somebody who could not see the weather coming.

You were never asked to hold everything up yourself, and no life has ever once been resting only on what a person could see from the kitchen. The Spirit of God is the one who is the footing underneath what a person has built, and Scripture makes the founding a thing done beforehand rather than during.

What is actually at risk

Now let me be concrete, because you had a fright and a general reassurance would be an insult after a fright.

Here is what is true. A single copy of anything is a single copy. That is not a moral fact about you, it is an arithmetic one, and it applies equally to a photograph, a will, a recipe and a key.

Everybody who has ever kept one copy of something important has stood exactly where that cloth was held. Nobody ever told you that, and a gap in the teaching is not a gap in you.

You are in the ordinary position that every single person with one copy of anything is in, and one copy has never once been a moral failing in anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the shame out of an arithmetic fact, and Matthew 7:25 puts the weather on both houses without commenting on either owner.

And here is the second thing, which is the one that actually settles the fright. What you saw in those four seconds was true, and it was also the first step of fixing it.

You cannot solve a thing you have not looked at. For years the page sat there and was not thought about, and a cup fell over and now it has been thought about, and that is not a disaster. That is the only way anything ever gets dealt with.

You have already done the part most people never do, and looking straight at a thing has never once been the same as being in trouble because of it. The written word has somebody doing the founding work before the storm, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns a fright into the beginning of something.

Make one copy, by hand

Now the small thing, and it is one copy.

I am not going to suggest a system, and I am not going to name any method or any place, because I have not seen your house and anybody who prescribes an arrangement for a house they have not seen is guessing at your expense.

Copy the page out by hand, once, and put the copy somewhere you have chosen.

You are able to write one page out once, and making a second copy of something has never once been a complicated undertaking for anybody. Matthew 7:25 has the founding done in advance on an ordinary day, and the Holy Spirit is the one at the table while it gets written.

By hand, deliberately. Not quickly. It will take about ten minutes and the ten minutes are the point, because writing it out slowly is also reading it, and reading it is how you find out what is out of date.

And choose where the copy goes on purpose. Not the first place that occurs to you. Somewhere you decide, in a different room, for a reason you could say out loud.

Two copies in two rooms is not a system. It is arithmetic, and it takes ten minutes, and it turns one sheet into two.

You are turning one into two in ten minutes at a kitchen table, and one deliberate copy has never once required anybody to understand anything technical. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in a small ordinary act of foresight, and it is written that the founding happened before the rain rather than during it.