There is a cake on the table with fifteen candles on it and Ines is doing sums instead of blowing them out, which her brother has noticed and is being unusually patient about.
She is not sad. This needs saying because everybody assumes.
What she is, is a counter. She has always been one. She had a chart on her wall at eight years old for reading. She keeps a note of how many times she has been to the pool this year. She has, on her phone, a running total of the number of words she knows in a language she started in September.
None of it is anxious. She likes it. It is genuinely one of the better things about her.
The trouble started this year, and she has been trying to explain it to her friend Rosie for about a month.
It is this. Every count she runs starts at zero on the first of January, or the first day of term, or the day she decides to start. That is what a count is. And the effect of that, over about seven years of doing it, is that every single January she wakes up at nothing.
Not behind. At nothing. Which is worse in a way she cannot explain, because behind at least implies there is a race with other people in it, and nothing implies a completely empty page.
She said to Rosie, on the way home from school: "I start every year with zero of everything."
Rosie, who does not count anything and finds all of this baffling, said: "Zero of what, though?"
Ines said zero swims, zero words, zero of the reading thing.
And Rosie said: "Yeah, but you can already swim."
Ines stopped walking.
She said afterwards that she stood on a sidewalk outside a chicken shop and did about four years of arithmetic in nine seconds and got a completely different answer to the one she has been getting.
She can swim. She could swim on the first of January. The count started at zero and she did not.
You may run a count too. And whether it is habits or years or how much you have got done, the count almost certainly resets, and the resetting almost certainly leaves you standing at a number that has nothing to do with what you were actually holding. And nobody has ever asked you what you already had before the count began.
Grace For Grace Means One Arriving On Top Of Another
There is a phrase in the first chapter of John that is short and slightly strange in English and does something very precise.
"And of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace."John 1:16
Grace for grace.
The construction is one thing arriving in place of, or on top of, another thing of the same kind. It is a picture of supply following supply, like waves, where the second does not arrive at an empty shore.
And the first half of the verse settles where it is all coming from. Of His fulness. Not out of a fixed allocation that gets used up. Out of a fulness, which is a word about a source that is not being depleted by what leaves it.
You have been receiving on top of something rather than starting from nothing. John 1 describes supply arriving on supply out of a source that is not diminished, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a short strange phrase and puts it beside a cake with fifteen candles on it.
Now do what Ines did on a sidewalk. If grace arrives on top of grace, then no count in this ever starts at zero. There is always something already there when the new thing arrives, and it was put there the same way.
You were holding something before today began, and it was given rather than accumulated. That is what the written word says about how any of this arrives, and it is the Spirit of God who makes a preposition land in somebody who has been waking up at nothing every January for seven years.
The Count Is Not Being Taken Off You
Now be careful, because a page about counting could easily tell a fifteen year old that her counting is the problem, and that would be both untrue and unkind.
The counting is fine. The chart at eight was fine. The words in the language and the swims in the pool are a genuinely good way to be, and nobody here is suggesting she stop.
What has been wrong is one number, and it is the number at the start.
And say the guard, because this is the landing category and the way these pages end is the whole guarantee of this site. Nothing here asks you for anything. No figure, no proportion, no percentage, no practice, no schedule, no commitment, no next step, and nothing routed to any person, cause, church or work anywhere at all, this one included.
You will not finish this page with a new count to run. There is no streak here. There is nothing to keep up and nothing to lose.
You have not been given a target by any of this. It is written that of His fulness have all we received, which is a completed verb about something already handed over, and His Spirit is the one who has been in the room for every January.
And you are as fully His on the first of the month as on the last, because grace arriving on grace does not reset, and the Holy Spirit is the one keeping this page from putting a new chart on your wall.
Something can be recalculated here, in nine seconds outside a chicken shop, and it costs you nothing at all.
You have never once started from zero. Scripture describes grace arriving on grace out of a fulness that is not depleted, and the Holy Spirit is the one making that read as a number changing rather than as a phrase from John.
Two things this is not. It is not the opening of a scheme and there is nothing at the end that gives you something new to count. And it is not a criticism of the way you keep track, because the counting is a good thing about you and this page is not asking for it.
You were holding something before the count began, and it arrived on top of something else that arrived first. That is written, and His Spirit has been in the room for every January of it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in your own kitchen. The standing to speak to God like this is yours in Christ and did not begin on the first of anything, Scripture is the ground under it, and the Holy Spirit has been in the room for every January. What He does next in your circumstances is His to decide, and none of these lines is a lever.
- Counting I have done from zero my whole life, you were always starting from the wrong number. The word of God says of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace, which is one thing arriving on top of another of the same kind. I am counting from what I was actually holding.
- Feeling of waking up at nothing every January, get out of this kitchen, because I could already swim on the first of the month and the count could not see it. In the name of Jesus I put you down beside the cake, since what is written says other men labored and we are entered into their labors. His Spirit has been in this room for every one of the seven years.
- Father, You have been handing it over on top of what was already handed over, out of a fulness that nothing takes away from. Your word says of His fulness have all we received, and Your Spirit is the one who got a friend who counts nothing to say four words on a sidewalk. Grace for grace, and I am glad to say so out loud.
John 1:16
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
