She used the good pen. That is the part that comes back to her.
It was a Sunday afternoon in January and she had finished the book, and the book had a rule of life in an appendix, and it was beautiful. Seven practices. Morning office, evening office, a weekly fast, a monthly retreat day, lectio four times a week, a Sabbath, and something about hospitality that she had underlined twice.
She copied the whole thing out onto the good paper with the good pen, in her best handwriting, and it took her an hour and ten minutes and it was one of the happiest hours she had spent in a year.
She kept it for eleven days.
The fast went first. Then the monthly retreat day, which never happened at all, because the month it was meant to happen in contained a funeral. Then the evening office, which turned out to be scheduled at the exact hour her flat is loudest. By the twelfth day the paper was on the shelf behind a plant, and it is still there, and she can see the corner of it from the sofa.
She is thirty seven and she has done this three times with three different books.
And what she has arrived at is not despair, it is something quieter and more corrosive. It is the sense that other people have an interior life and she has an interior aspiration, and that the difference between them is a kind of seriousness she has not got.
She would not put it that way out loud. Out loud she says she is bad at routine.
Let thy words be few
There is a line in Ecclesiastes that is nearly always read as a warning against babbling, and it is that, but read it as a person who has just copied out seven practices in her best handwriting.
Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter any thing before God: for God is in heaven, and thou upon earth: therefore let thy words be few.Ecclesiastes 5:2
Take that with the good pen down. You are not overdue on anything. The word says let thy words be few, which is mercy for the overcommitted, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been doing the work in you that no appendix ever did.
Let thy words be few.
That is not a restriction placed on the enthusiastic. It is a mercy handed to the overcommitted. God is in heaven and you are on earth, says the writer, so stop making enormous verbal offerings you cannot carry, and say a small true thing instead.
Every rule you have copied has been an act of being rash with your mouth on paper. Seven practices, made in an hour of real love for God, promised by a woman who had not yet met the February in which her aunt would die.
So take this where you sit, and know it is not my kindness, it is what is written: you are not behind, and nothing about your standing shifted between day eleven and day twelve. His word says let thy words be few, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been in you all along, doing the actual work that no appendix has ever done.
There was a man in England in the seventeen hundreds who was met by God in a small meeting where his heart, as he wrote, was strangely warmed, and who then built a rule of life for an entire movement.
Look at what it was made of.
Six people in a room once a week. A short reading. A handful of plain questions asked out loud. That is very nearly the whole of it, and the reason it is so small is that it was built for servant girls with fourteen hour days and coal miners coming off nights, people who owned no candles and did not control one hour of their own time.
He himself kept a far heavier rule. He rose at four and fasted twice a week for decades. He did not put that in the appendix for everybody else, because he could tell the difference between his own practice and a rule that ordinary people could keep, and that distinction is the reason the thing outlived him by three centuries.
The nickname came as mockery of how methodical they were. They kept it, because it was accurate.
A warmed heart with no method cools. A method with no warmth is only a schedule. He held both, and the method endured because it was cut to the size of the smallest life in the room.
The rule you copied was cut to the size of the author's life. It was honest and it was good and it was never measured for you.
The rule is not yours. It never has been. It belongs to a person with a different job, a different flat, a different noise level at seven in the evening and a different set of funerals in their February.
And it was measured for the person who wrote it. Scripture says let thy words be few, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been doing the real work in you through three abandoned appendices.
So take it off the shelf, and do not throw it away, because it was made in love and it did no harm. Fold it. Put it in a drawer. Say thank you to whoever wrote it.
And then write one line. Yours.
Not seven practices. One. Written by you, about your actual life, in the same good handwriting if you want, on a card small enough to lose.
Something like: I read four verses standing at the window before I open my phone. Or: I say one sentence out loud when I lock the door behind me. One line, attached to something that already happens every day in your life whether you are spiritually serious or not.
You are met right now, in a flat that is loud at seven, and I am not saying it to console you; it is written that He is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, and it is the Holy Spirit and not a rule of life who has kept you reaching for Him through three books and three abandoned appendices.
And notice what the reaching itself proves. Three times you have sat down on a Sunday afternoon and given God an hour and ten minutes of your best handwriting because you wanted Him. Nobody does that three times out of vanity. Vanity gives up after one.
Your words are few and they are yours. That is a rule you can keep, and a kept small rule is worth more than a copied magnificent one, every day, in any weather.
You are not behind, and nothing about your standing shifted between the eleventh day and the twelfth. His word says let thy words be few, which is a mercy handed to the overcommitted, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been doing the actual work in you that no appendix has ever done.
Declare this over yourself
- Rule of life on that shelf, you are somebody else's coat and you were never cut for me, and you do not get to be the measure of my seriousness. His word says let thy words be few, so I fold you away in the name of Jesus.
- Sense that other people have an interior life and I have an aspiration, you have no ground in this flat. Scripture says He is nigh unto all them that call upon Him, and His Spirit has been the one doing the work in me through eleven days and through every day after them.
- God, my words are few and they are mine, and that is a rule I can keep. Your word says let thy words be few, so one line goes on a card at the window this morning, and I am not writing a second one.
Ecclesiastes 5:2
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