The Last Good Thing Ended So I Am Bracing

The last one was the business, and it ran for four years, and it was good for three of them.

You remember the feeling in the second year. Standing in that unit on a Saturday with the door open and the light coming in, and a genuine sense that a thing you had made was working.

And you remember what it was like in the fourth year.

So when the man handed you the keys to this place in August, something in you did a very specific thing. It did not celebrate. It took one step back and folded its arms and said, in effect: we have done this before.

And since then you have been living here in a particular way.

You have not put anything on social media. You have not had anybody over. When your sister said something enthusiastic about the kitchen you said something about how there is a lot to do, which was true and which was also a move.

You are guarding it.

And the way you are guarding it is by refusing to enjoy it, because somewhere in you a piece of arithmetic got written in the fourth year of that business, and the arithmetic says: the more you enjoy a thing, the more it costs you when it goes.

The arithmetic does not work

Let me take that arithmetic apart, because it is the thing running your autumn and it is not sound.

The belief is that enjoyment adds to the eventual loss. Enjoy it less, lose less.

Now think back to the business. In the fourth year, when it went, what actually hurt? Was it the Saturdays in the second year with the door open? Or was it the four years, the work, the people, the thing you had built, all of which would have been there whether you had stood in the doorway feeling glad or not?

The enjoying was not the expensive part. The enjoying was the only part that paid you anything at the time.

You have been withholding the one thing that was never charged to you, and no gladness anywhere has ever once been added to the cost of a loss. The Holy Spirit is the one who has been in this house since August whether anybody was enjoying it or not, and it is written in Zephaniah 3 that the Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty, and he will rejoice over thee with joy.

And now the second half, which is worse.

The bracing does not work. You cannot pre feel a loss. Everybody tries, and nobody has ever succeeded, because grief does not accept installments paid in advance. If something goes wrong with this house, the fact that you refused to enjoy it for two years beforehand will not reduce the bill by one cent.

So the arrangement costs you everything up front and returns nothing at the other end.

You have been paying in advance into an account that does not exist, and bracing has never once reduced anything for anybody. Zephaniah 3 has God rejoicing over His people with singing, and the Spirit of God is the one doing that without waiting to see how anything turns out.

He will rejoice over thee with joy

Here is the verse, and the direction of it is the surprise.

The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy; he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, King James Version)

He will rejoice over thee with joy.

Most people, reading that, hear something about how they should feel about God. That is not what it says. The rejoicing in that sentence is His, and the person being rejoiced over is you.

And it is not measured. Rejoice with joy, joy over thee with singing. That is a man reaching for a second and a third word because the first one is not enough, which is not the writing of somebody describing a cautious affection.

You are being rejoiced over by somebody who is not bracing, and no caution anywhere has ever once been visible in the way God enjoys His own people. The Holy Spirit is the one who would not settle for one, and the written word uses three words for the same gladness in one verse.

And notice what it does not say.

It does not say He will rejoice over you when things are settled. It does not say He is holding some back until it is clear how this goes. He rests in His love, which is a phrase about somebody who is not braced for anything.

That is the posture being described in your direction, from the one who actually knows how everything turns out.

You have somebody rejoicing over you who already knows the ending, and His gladness has never once been held back pending an outcome. Zephaniah 3 says he will rest in his love, and the Spirit of God is the one who is not standing with His arms folded.