I Only Count The Good Ones

You have been keeping a record and it is not an honest one.

Not deliberately. Nobody sets out to falsify a ledger about their own family. But the admissions policy has drifted, and the drift has gone all one way.

An evening that went well goes in. An evening where she was difficult about it, or you were short, or it ended early, or somebody cried, does not. That one gets filed as an attempt rather than an instance.

And the result is a record that shows about a third of what actually happened, and a person looking at it who concludes they are not doing very much.

And the odd part is that you would not do this to anybody else. If a friend told you they had sat down with their child eleven times in a fortnight, you would not ask how many of those went smoothly. You would say eleven. It is only in your own accounting that the number gets audited before it is allowed to exist.

A book of remembrance was written

There is a line in Malachi about a record being kept, and the interesting thing is what gets written in it.

Then they that feared the LORD spake often one to another: and the LORD hearkened, and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the LORD, and that thought upon his name. (Malachi 3:16, King James Version)

They spake often one to another. That is what goes in the book. Not the quality of what was said. Not whether the conversation went well. That they spoke, and that it happened often.

And notice the context, which matters enormously here. The chapter before this is about people who have been complaining that serving God is pointless and produces nothing.

So the book of remembrance is written in a period of discouragement, about people who were discouraged, recording the fact that they kept speaking anyway.

You are looking at a record that has never once been interested in how the evening went. Malachi 3:16 writes down that they spake often and nothing about the quality of it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a standard a tired parent can actually be measured by.

And the writing is being done by somebody else. The people in that verse are not keeping the book. It is written before him, for them.

You were never the one who was supposed to be keeping the record, and no ledger anywhere has ever once been handed to the person it was about. The written word puts the book in God's keeping, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes an accounting job off somebody who was never assigned it.

What the ledger produces

Let me describe what your record actually does, because it is not neutral storage.

A record that admits only good evenings produces a number that is always about a third of the truth. And then you look at that number and draw a conclusion, and the conclusion is about you rather than about the accounting.

Three a fortnight sounds like somebody who is not really doing this. Eleven a fortnight sounds like somebody who is.

They are the same fortnight.

You have been reaching a verdict from a number that has never once been the real one. Malachi 3:16 records the frequency rather than the quality, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what their own filter has produced.

And there is a second effect, which lands during the evening rather than after it.

If only good evenings count, then every evening is being assessed while it happens. Part of you is watching to see whether this one is going to qualify.

Which means the ledger is not just recording the evenings. It is changing them, because an assessed evening is a different evening.

You have been grading a thing while doing it, and no evening anywhere has ever once been able to be lived and marked at the same time. The written word writes the fact down and nothing more, and the Spirit of God is the one who gets a parent back inside an ordinary Tuesday.

You were never keeping a false record on purpose, and nobody has ever once drifted into an admissions policy deliberately. Malachi 3:16 records the speaking often, in a discouraged season, without comment, and it is the Holy Spirit who restores the entries a person struck out.

Write that you did it. Nothing else.

So here is the assignment, and the restriction is the whole of it.

Tonight, write down that you did it. And write nothing else beside it.

No mark. No note about how it went. No small comment, not even a word, not even a symbol.

A date, and a tick, or a line, or the word yes. That is all that goes on the paper.

You have been given the smallest possible act of record keeping, and no entry anywhere has ever once needed to be longer than a single stroke to be true. Malachi 3:16 puts the book in somebody else's keeping, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a pen makes one mark.

The restriction is the exercise, because the comment is where the ledger reasserts itself. A tick with a small note beside it is not a record, it is a review with a tick on top.

You have been asked for one mark and no opinion, and a bare fact has never once been able to be argued with the way a graded one can. Malachi 3:16 records the speaking often and adds nothing at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when the pen stops after a single stroke.

And if the evening went badly, it still goes down, identically, with nothing beside it, because Malachi 3:16 writes down that they spake often and not how any particular conversation went.

Then look at it at the end of a fortnight, and let the number be what it actually is.

Malachi 3:16 has the book written by somebody else and records the frequency rather than the quality, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table where somebody writes one mark and stops.

You are permitted to record a fact without a verdict on it, and a bare entry has never once been a dishonest one. The written word notes the speaking and nothing further, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a pen stops after one mark.

You have a fortnight of real evenings available to look at, and it has never once required any of them to have gone well. Malachi 3:16 writes the book in a discouraged season about discouraged people, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an honest number bearable.