I Could Not Enjoy Our Good News

It was good news. It was genuinely good and you were genuinely pleased.

You said so, and you meant it, and there was a moment in the kitchen where the whole family was pleased about the same thing at the same time, which does not happen often.

And then about forty minutes later you heard about somebody else's, which was bigger, and yours went small.

Not gone. Small. It shrank while you were standing there holding a phone, and by bedtime the thing you had been glad about had turned into something you were slightly embarrassed to have made a fuss over.

I am not going to tell you to be more grateful. That is a standard and this site does not hand those out, and gratitude produced on instruction is not gratitude.

And I am not going to say anything about the other family, whose news was good and who deserve it and who did nothing at all except exist in the same week as you.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice

There is a short instruction in Romans 12 that most people read as a duty and which is actually describing a supply.

Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep. (Romans 12:15, King James Version)

Rejoice with. Not instead of. Not in proportion to. With.

The word with assumes two separate gladnesses existing at the same time, and it does not put them on a scale. There is nothing in that sentence about ranking, and nothing about one being reduced by the other.

You are able to rejoice with somebody without paying for it, and no gladness has ever once been funded out of another one. Romans 12:15 says rejoice with them that do rejoice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen where something got smaller at half past eight.

And it sits beside its opposite in the same verse. Weep with them that weep.

Nobody reads that half and worries that weeping with a grieving friend uses up their own capacity for grief. Everybody knows sorrow does not work like that.

You have a gladness that works the way grief does, and it has never once been a limited quantity that had to be shared out. It is written in Romans 12:15 that the rejoicing and the weeping both happen with rather than instead of, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies both without either running short.

The scale is imported

Now let me name what actually happened at half past eight, because it was not a change in the news.

Nothing happened to your good news. It is the same size it was at seven o'clock. Nothing about it altered, and the child it belongs to has no idea any of this went on.

What arrived was a scale, and a scale needs two things on it, and once it existed your news was on one side of it. That is not envy and it is not ingratitude. It is what a scale does the moment it is introduced.

You are not the one who put a scale in that kitchen, and using one that arrives has never once been a fault in the person holding it. It is written in Romans 12:15 that the rejoicing happens with rather than against, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes an instrument instead of blaming a hand.

Romans 12:15 has no scale in it anywhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes an instrument rather than telling somebody to feel differently while holding it.

You are not looking at a smaller thing, and nothing about that news has ever once actually changed size. Romans 12:15 puts two gladnesses side by side without a scale between them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the instrument out of the room.

And here is the plain thing, because bedtime turned this into something about you.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence of an ungrateful or a small hearted person.

It is a person who had a scale handed to them at half past eight and used it, which is what anybody does with a scale.

You have not been exposed as ungrateful, and forty minutes with a scale in your hand has never once been a report on your heart. The written word describes rejoicing with rather than measuring against in Romans 12:15, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to read a shrunken evening as a small heart.

The child does not know

One more thing, and it is the part that will actually change something tomorrow.

Your child does not know any of this. They still have the good news at its original size, exactly as it was in the kitchen at seven o'clock.

Which means the thing that shrank is entirely inside one adult, and none of it has reached them, and there is still time to say the thing that was going to be said before the phone.

You have the whole of it still in your hands, and nothing that happened on those stairs has ever once reached the person it belongs to. It is written in Romans 12:15 that the rejoicing happens with people rather than against them, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in a sentence said at breakfast about a thing from yesterday.

That is not a rebuke. It is a fact about where the damage is, and the answer is small.

Romans 12:15 keeps the rejoicing available regardless of what anybody else has, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a sentence said to a child the next morning as though nothing had happened.

You still have the whole thing to give them, and none of what happened at half past eight has ever once reached the person it belongs to. Romans 12:15 keeps a gladness intact regardless of anybody else's, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a sentence said at breakfast about a thing from yesterday.