It Is Only Me So It Does Not Matter

Your daughter said it kindly.

She said: well, at least it is only you, so it is not the end of the world. And she meant it as comfort, and it was meant well, and it was the most deflating sentence anybody has said to you this year.

Because it is true, in a way. One person makes less washing. One person can work around a broken thing more easily than five can.

And it also contains something that has been quietly building for about three years, and it is this: that a household of one is a smaller case, requiring less, deserving less, warranting less attention when something goes wrong.

And the worst part is that you have started saying it yourself. When the machine went you said out loud, to nobody: well, it is only me.

You are one person and a full household and not a smaller case, and a woman on her own has never once been a person who needed less than a house full of them.

The very hairs of your head are all numbered

There is a line in Luke about how closely God attends to a person, and the scale of it is deliberately absurd.

But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows. (Luke 12:7, King James Version)

The very hairs of your head are all numbered.

That is a level of attention that no accounting requires. Nobody needs that information. It is not useful and it does not serve any purpose except to establish the degree of attention being paid.

And it is done per person. Hairs are counted on one head at a time, which means the attention described there does not scale down for a household of one. It is already per person, and always was.

You are being attended to at a level that was always per person, and a household of one has never once been a smaller unit of God's attention. Luke 12:7 counts hairs on a single head, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman in a quiet kitchen.

And notice what it is set against: fear not therefore.

The counting is given as the argument against fear. The reason not to be afraid is that this level of attention is already in place, and the attention is the evidence.

You are being given the attention as the reason rather than as a nice thought, and a woman told fear not has never once been told it without a reason attached. The written word makes the counting the ground of the instruction, and the Spirit of God is the one who applies that to somebody standing alone in a kitchen.

And then the last clause: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

The comparison is with sparrows, which earlier in that passage are described as not being forgotten before God. And the argument runs upward from there: if that is true of them, how much more of you.

It is an argument about value made about a person, singular, standing there being addressed.

You are more valuable than the things that are already not forgotten, and a single person in an empty house has never once been the exception to a passage about attention. Luke 12:7 argues upward from the sparrows to the person, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land in an ordinary kitchen.

Laying the table

Something practical, and it is one habit that has quietly gone.

At some point in the last three years the table stopped being laid. Not dramatically. It became a plate, at the counter, standing, or on a tray in front of something.

And that happened because of the same sentence. It is only me, so a cloth and a proper setting for one person seemed like a performance with nobody to perform it for.

You have been treating a habit as a performance rather than as a thing you do for yourself, and a table laid for one has never once been a table laid for an audience. The written word counts the hairs on one head with nobody watching, and the Spirit of God is the one present at a table with one chair at it.

Now the practical instruction, and it is tonight.

Lay the table. Properly. The cloth, the plate, the glass, the knife and fork where they go. For one.

And then sit at it and eat, facing into the room, without the television on.

This will feel absurd for about the first ninety seconds, and then it will not, and the not is the thing being gone after.

You are able to lay a table for yourself tonight, and a proper setting for one person has never once been a smaller occasion than a proper setting for six. Luke 12:7 does the counting per person regardless of who is in the house, and the Holy Spirit is the one at the table with you while you eat.

And ring somebody about the machine on Monday, because the other half of it is only me is that the repair gets postponed indefinitely on the grounds that nobody else is inconvenienced.

Nobody else being inconvenienced is not a reason. There is one person being inconvenienced, and one has always been enough.

You have a machine in that kitchen that stopped working for somebody who lives here, and a household of one has never once been a household whose repairs could wait indefinitely. Luke 12:7 counts one head at a time, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman makes the call.