A Score I Never Agreed To Keep

There is a running total. You would deny it if somebody asked and it is there anyway.

Every household you know is on it. Not consciously, not as a list you could produce, but there is a position for each of them and a position for yours, and the positions move.

Something happens to somebody and your position adjusts. Something happens to you and it adjusts again. And none of this is malicious, and you would help any of those families at two in the morning without thinking about it.

It runs anyway, underneath everything, and it has been running for years, and it produces nothing except a low background noise that you have stopped being able to hear because it never stops.

I am not going to tell you to stop comparing. That is an instruction with no method attached, which is the least useful kind of sentence there is.

And I am not going to say anything about any of those families. They are not in this and they never were.

Neither do I exercise myself in great matters

There is a very short psalm that describes coming out of exactly this, and the first verse is the honest part.

LORD, my heart is not haughty, nor mine eyes lofty: neither do I exercise myself in great matters, or in things too high for me. (Psalm 131:1, King James Version)

Neither do I exercise myself in great matters.

Exercise there is an effort word. It means working at something, applying yourself, keeping something running by continuous attention.

That is what a running score is. It does not maintain itself. It takes effort, constantly, and the effort is invisible because it has been going on for so long.

You have been exercising yourself in something that takes constant effort, and none of it has ever once maintained itself. Psalm 131:1 says neither do I exercise myself in great matters, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a house where a total has been running for years.

And then the second half. Or in things too high for me.

Too high is not a rebuke about ambition. It means outside a person's proper business, above their station, not theirs to be handling.

Ranking households is exactly that. It is a judgment nobody is qualified to make from the outside, and it has been running in one head as though it were.

You are not qualified to keep that score and never were, and no household anywhere has ever once been rankable from outside it. It is written in Psalm 131:1 that the things too high are left alone, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a matter out of a person's hands rather than helping them do it fairly.

The score produces nothing

Now let me name the thing that will make this easier to put down, because it is not a moral argument.

The score has no output. There is nothing to do with the result. If your position improves you do not act on it, and if it drops you cannot act on it either, and no decision anywhere in your life has ever once been made using it.

It is a process that runs, consumes attention, and produces nothing at all.

That is worth knowing, because you have probably been treating it as a moral failing when it is closer to a machine left running in a room nobody uses.

Psalm 131:1 describes leaving a matter alone rather than winning it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who switches off a process instead of correcting its output.

You are able to switch it off rather than win it, and no result it has ever produced has once been used for anything. Psalm 131:1 has a man simply leaving the great matters alone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who ends a process rather than improving it.

And here is the plain thing, because years of background noise has become something about your character.

That is not a verdict. It is not a mark, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence of a competitive or a jealous person.

It is a machine that started running at some point and was never switched off, and switching it off is a smaller act than repenting of it.

You have not been quietly resenting anybody, and a process running in the background has never once been the same as a heart. The written word leaves the great matters alone in Psalm 131:1 rather than adjudicating them, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to read a running total as a character.

Quieted, as a weaned child

There is a second verse in that psalm and it is where the whole thing lands.

Surely I have behaved and quieted myself, as a child that is weaned of his mother: my soul is even as a weaned child.

A weaned child is the picture, and it is a specific one. A nursing child at its mother is there for something. A weaned child at its mother is there for her.

You are being offered company rather than an outcome, and no part of that quiet has ever once been earned by coming out ahead. It is written in Psalm 131 that the soul is even as a weaned child, and the Spirit of God is the one who produces that state rather than asking anybody to arrange it.

The wanting has gone out of the relationship and what is left is company. That is the state the psalm describes as quiet, and it is not achieved by winning anything.

Psalm 131 arrives at quiet by leaving a matter alone rather than by settling it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who produces that in a person rather than requiring it from them.

You are able to be quieted rather than satisfied, and that state has never once been reached by coming out ahead. Psalm 131 describes a soul quieted as a weaned child, and the Holy Spirit is the one who produces that in somebody rather than asking them to arrange it.