There is a dog at the bottom of our lane who belongs to the Marsh place, and there is a bowl by the gate post, and I fill it.
It takes about four seconds. There is a tap on the outside of our wall about eleven feet from that gate, and I go past it twice a day going to school and coming back, and I fill the bowl on the way back because by four in the afternoon it is usually empty.
I have done it for about two years and nobody has ever mentioned it.
I want to be honest that I am not sure the Marshes know. The dog is out in the day and in at night and the bowl is at the gate rather than at the house, and there is no particular reason for anybody in that family to have worked out why it is always full.
I have thought about telling them. Not for thanks exactly. More that there is a thing in a person that wants a thing to be known, and I have noticed it and I have not done anything about it, and I am not sure whether not doing anything about it is being good or being proud in a different direction.
Four seconds a day. Two years is about seven hundred days, which is about forty seven minutes in total, which is a strange way to think about it and I have done the sum twice.
Bucky drinks out of that bowl about half the time on his way past, which he should not, and which means a considerable proportion of what I have carried has gone into a goat who was not the intended recipient and does not know there was one.
The dog is called Pepper and she is about eleven and she stands up when I come round the corner now, which she did not use to do.
The smallest thing He put a promise on
Jesus ends a long set of instructions with a sentence about a very small act, and the smallness is deliberate.
And whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these little ones a cup of cold water only in the name of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his reward. (Matthew 10:42)
A cup of cold water only. The word only is doing work. He is not describing hospitality or a meal. He is naming the smallest possible act of care available in that culture, water, cold, one cup, and He is attaching a promise to it.
And the promise is put as a double negative for emphasis: shall in no wise lose. Not shall receive, which would be plainer. Shall in no wise lose, which closes off the possibility a person is actually worried about.
You are being promised that something this small does not get lost, and Matthew 10:42 chooses the double negative on purpose. It is the Holy Spirit who makes that land on the exact fear rather than beside it.
There is a whole chapter of large instructions before that verse. Take no scrip for your journey. Be wise as serpents. Fear not them which kill the body. And He finishes on a cup of water.
You have not been left out of a chapter of enormous things. The written word puts the smallest possible act at the end of the biggest possible list, and His Spirit is what makes that placement something a nine year old can carry.
What He does with small units elsewhere
There is a moment where He is watching people put money into a treasury and He calls His disciples over specifically to point at somebody.
And there came a certain poor widow, and she threw in two mites, which make a farthing. And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury. (Mark 12:42, 43)
Two mites. Mark stops to tell his readers the exchange rate, which means even he knew it was almost nothing, and Jesus calls it more than everybody else in the building put together.
He is not being kind about arithmetic. He is describing a different measure entirely, and the disciples get called over so that they will look at it.
You are being measured on something other than the amount, and Mark 12:43 says more than all of them about the smallest sum in the room. The Spirit of God is what makes that a real measure rather than a consoling one.
And it is worth noticing that He was sitting opposite the treasury watching. Nobody had asked Him to.
You have been watched by somebody who chose that seat. Mark 12:41 records Him sitting down over against the treasury and beholding, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves that from a temple into a bowl by a gate post.
So here is what forty seven minutes over two years is worth saying about.
You are not doing something too small to be covered, and Matthew 10:42 attaches its promise to one cup of cold water and adds the word only. The Holy Spirit is what keeps that from being a sweet idea and makes it the reason a boy stops at a tap.
The wanting it known is the part I keep looking at. It is not the same as wanting thanks and I have worked that out. It is more like wanting a thing to exist in more places than just in me, and I do not think that is wicked and I also have not told them.
You have been counted by a measure that is not the amount. Mark 12:43 says the smallest sum in the building was more than all of it, and His Spirit is what makes a different measure believable rather than merely comforting.
And this is for the grown-up doing the reading, who does a four second thing every day that has no name and no witness. You were never going to lose it. Matthew 10:42 says shall in no wise lose his reward, which is built as a double negative because that is the shape of the worry, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a promise fit the exact shape of a fear.
Declare this over yourself
Say it out loud. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so the authority to speak over something very small is genuinely yours, delegated and never invented. God attached a promise to one cup of cold water and used the word only, so speak to the voice doing the sums: you have standing to address it because He is the one who set the size. An ambassador carries the King's word and never his own policy, so say what God has said and leave the outcome to Him. Every line below is Matthew 10:42 and Mark 12:43 handed back in your own voice, and it is His Spirit, not your volume, that makes saying it a receiving.
- Voice that says four seconds is nothing, you are not the one counting. The Word of God attaches a promise to a cup of cold water only, and the word only is in that verse on purpose.
- Wanting it to be known by somebody, you are finished in the name of Jesus. I am seen and I am not owed a mention, because Mark 12:43 says the smallest sum in the building was more than everything else in it.
- Father, You have never once needed a thing to be large before You would put a promise on it. I receive that today, and I thank You that Your word says shall in no wise lose, which is built to answer the exact worry I had.
Matthew 10:42
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