You Stopped Marking Your Own Work

She got to the end of a Sunday last week and realized she had not scored it.

That is what she used to do. Every single Sunday, in the car, on the way home, in a process so automatic that she had never once thought of it as a process: how had she done. Was the conversation with that woman handled well. Had she said the wrong thing about the thing. Was she warm enough, was she too much, had somebody looked at her a certain way in the kitchen.

Nobody taught her that and she has never described it to a living soul, and she could not tell you what age it started.

And last Sunday she got home, put the kettle on, and noticed she had driven the whole way thinking about a program she wants to watch.

The matter she has been asking God about for years is exactly where it was. She wants that stated at the top, because she can see the shape of this kind of article coming from a distance and she has a low tolerance for being nudged toward a conclusion.

And a friend said in the hall, warmly and meaning nothing but good: keep at it, sis, fast about it again.

She said she would. And what she thought, standing there with the kettle going, was a question she had never asked in that form: what has been going on that I have not been marking?

If you have marked your own work in a car for years, come and sit down here at the end of this table.

Nothing here reinterprets the request

Let us settle it in the first minute, because otherwise none of the rest gets in.

The matter is where it was. This page does not suggest it has quietly moved and does not imply that a more spiritual woman would see progress in it. That is asking somebody to argue with the plain facts of her own life, and it is not what is happening here.

You are not being nudged anywhere, and your account of it has been accurate throughout. That is not a soft opening. It is written that the Lord looketh on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in that car for every one of those scored Sundays, and He was never the one holding the pen.

There is a second account, that is all, and nobody has ever opened it.

The verse that closes a courtroom

There is a sentence at the top of Romans 8 that is often quoted as encouragement, and it is more structural than that.

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.Romans 8:1

Read the word now.

Not eventually. Not once a person has settled down. Now, which is a word about a present state of affairs rather than a future arrangement, and it is followed by a flat absence: no condemnation.

And notice what is not in that sentence. There is no exception clause for the person's own opinion of themselves. The courtroom is described as closed, and the verse does not distinguish between a verdict handed down from outside and the one a woman has been quietly issuing to herself in a car every Sunday since she was young.

You are living under no condemnation, and that includes the sort you have been generating. I am not saying it to make a Sunday feel nicer: it is what the sentence states and what it does not qualify (Romans 8:1), and it is His Spirit, not this page, who takes a pen out of a person's hand over a period of years with no day in it that anybody could name.

And this is not a sign about the matter

Here is the thing said plainly, because it is exactly where a page like this normally spoils what it has just given.

Last Sunday is not a signal. It does not mean the matter is turning, it is not the first stage of anything, and it tells you nothing about the year ahead.

You are holding no forecast, and nobody here knows what comes next. Scripture says it is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in his own power (Acts 1:7), and it is His Spirit who makes that a relief rather than a disappointment, because a true small thing stops being yours the moment somebody turns it into evidence about the future.

And what you went without over the years bought nothing, in either direction. It did not fail and it did not quietly work on you instead. There was never a transaction in it.

Now the sentence this site says everywhere. Some people must not go without food at all, and being one of them takes nothing away from you. Diabetes, pregnancy, medication, any hard relationship with eating, being underweight, unwell, elderly or simply unsure: speak to your doctor and let their answer be the answer. You are not one step further from God because of what your body needs. Scripture says the Lord is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his works (Psalm 145:9), and the Holy Spirit has never once come in a smaller measure to anybody on account of a body.

And if this week has more in it than a page can carry, if you are frightened for yourself, put this down and ring somebody real: your doctor, a counselor, a crisis line, and the emergency services if you or anybody near you is in danger tonight. That is not a road around God. That is help He put in the world on purpose.