It is the door frame she keeps coming back to, which she knows is a strange thing to grieve.
Pencil marks, going up the edge of the kitchen doorway. A date beside each one in her own handwriting and then, further up, in her daughter's, because at some point the child took over the recording of it. Twenty-odd little lines. That door frame does not exist any more. There is no version of the world in which anybody can go and look at it.
Friday afternoon, and she is standing in the kitchen of the let with a mug in her hand that came with the place. It is a nice enough mug. It is not hers. Almost nothing in this flat is hers and it has been eight weeks and she still opens the wrong drawer for the spoons.
Her father's tools went. The whole lot, in the shed, and the shed went too. She could tell you the handles of those chisels by feel in the dark. There was a box of letters that had been in a wardrobe since before her daughter was born, and she had not read them in years and had intended to, at some point, when there was time.
Insurance is a process and not a comfort. There is a person she speaks to who is perfectly pleasant and has a reference number for her, and the phone calls all end with somebody saying they will be in touch, and nobody is doing anything wrong, and none of it is anything at all like being helped.
Eight weeks in, everybody has gone back to their lives. The first fortnight was extraordinary, people appearing with bags of things, and she will never forget it. Then, quite properly, harvest and school and their own kitchens. Somebody said last week that she seemed to be coping so well.
She stands there with the mug. What she has started to think, and has not said to a living soul, is that she does not believe she will ever feel anything good again. Not that things will not improve. Improvement is not the question. She means the actual capacity, the thing inside a person that responds when something nice happens, and she thinks it went with the door frame.
Maybe that is roughly where you are. Somebody handed you a beautiful line about the oil of joy and you could not get anywhere near it, and if you came to this page hoping the name over the door meant something practical, I will not make you feel small about it.
What is actually meant by it
Abundance here means fullness of life, and it does not mean money. Not the claim, not the replacement of a single object, and not a figure of any kind. When the Shepherd said in John 10 that He came so that they might have life and have it to the full, the noun in the sentence is life, and everything else people load onto the word is their own.
That is the definition, it is the only one this site will give you, and it is not a promise about your circumstances.
You have the whole of it this afternoon, in a kitchen where nothing on the shelves belongs to you. It is written in John 10 in the Shepherd’s own words, with life as the noun and nothing else smuggled in beside it, and the Holy Spirit carries a plain sentence into a room a person did not choose.
Now, joy, which is the thing you privately think is finished in you.
It is poured, and you are not the one pouring
The phrase is the oil of joy for mourning, from Isaiah 61, and I want you to notice the picture in it before anybody gets to the feeling.
Oil is poured. That is the whole physics of the image. It is not generated by the person receiving it, it is not worked up, and it is not summoned by the right attitude on a Friday afternoon in a rented kitchen. Somebody else is holding the flask.
And James says every good gift and every perfect gift comes down from above, from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation. Down. From outside the person. Gladness is a thing that arrives rather than a thing you manufacture, which means the capacity you think has gone was never the source of it in the first place.
You have not been disqualified by eight weeks of feeling nothing. That is not my kindness, it is written into the shape of the words gift and poured and comes down, none of which describe an achievement, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a thing like that to a woman holding a mug that is not hers.
I am not going to promise you the feeling
Here is the part where I have to be careful with you, and I would rather be plain than warm.
I cannot tell you that you are going to feel glad, and I am not going to. Not by Christmas, not by the spring, not on a schedule of any kind. I have no information about your interior weather and anybody who claims to have some is guessing at your expense.
What I can tell you is what is settled, and what is settled is who is holding the oil. He gives, He pours, He does not vary, and He does not require the recipient to be in a fit state. That is His to do, in His timing and by His hand, and my job is to tell you what is true rather than to predict what it will feel like on a Tuesday.
And I am not going to tell you the fire was arranged so that something could come of it. Not that there is a reason somebody could write on a card, not that a further-along version of you is grateful for it, and not that anything coming is going to be better than a box of letters in a wardrobe. Those sentences get said kindly and they land like a boot, and I am not putting one in your hands.
You are not failing at anything by feeling nothing. Scripture has a man saying his soul refused to be comforted, and it says it about a man who was seeking God at the time, in Psalm 77, and the Holy Spirit did not put that in the book so that a woman in a rented kitchen would think herself the first.
And it is not a swap
One more thing, because this is where the phrase gets misused and it does real damage.
Gladness is not offered here as a substitute for the door frame. It does not replace the tools, or the letters, or twenty-odd pencil lines with dates beside them. Nothing that gets poured out on a person makes those things not lost, and God has never once asked anybody to trade the grief in exchange for the oil.
The verse puts them side by side. Oil of joy for mourning, in a sentence that names the mourning without flinching. He is not asking you to stop. He is not embarrassed by how long it is taking. He is not standing there with the flask waiting for you to look more receptive.
You were loved on the night the rooms went, at the hour it was happening, and not one degree less than you are loved on a Friday in a borrowed kitchen. That is written as love commended toward us while we were in no state at all, in Romans 5, and His Spirit is the one who gets that as far as a woman who has started opening the wrong drawer for the spoons.
Something can be received in that borrowed kitchen, this afternoon, with the mug that is not yours in your hand.
You are inside the reach of a giving that has nothing to do with your capacity. James 1 puts every good gift as coming down, from the Father of lights, with no variation in Him at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who pours rather than the one who waits for a woman to be in the mood for it.
Nothing here is being predicted for you. No feeling on a date, no promise about when, and no suggestion that gladness is being offered to you instead of the things that burnt. What is settled is the hand the oil is in, and that hand has never yet required the ground to be tidy.
So open your hands. Not as a gesture, as a position. A thing done with the body stops being an idea somebody offered you and becomes something actually done in front of God, and His people have always received with their hands open rather than their fists closed round what is left.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud in the borrowed kitchen. You have the standing to say them because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and a fire did not move a person out of that seat. What you feel, and when, and what any of the months ahead hold, is His to decide, and however He answers over any of it, these three are true this afternoon. They rest on what is written in Isaiah 61 and James 1 rather than on anything I could talk you into, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries them into a kitchen with the wrong drawer for the spoons.
- Door frame with the pencil marks on it, you are gone and you were loved and you are not the measure of what is left in me. Scripture says every good gift comes down from the Father of lights, in whom there is no variation, and He never once made the pouring conditional on the state of the room. In the name of Jesus I hold my hands open in a kitchen that is not mine.
- Thought that I am done with gladness, you are dismissed from this flat and you do not get to tell me what is finished in me. A man in Psalm 77 said his soul refused to be comforted and he was seeking God while he said it, so feeling nothing has never been the disqualification. Joy is His to pour and it was never mine to manufacture, and my hands are open this afternoon.
- Father of lights, You give and You pour and there is no variation in You, and You have never asked me to look more receptive first. You know the box of letters and the handles of my father chisels, and You are not embarrassed by how long this is taking. Pour what You pour, in Your own way and Your own hour, and I am sitting here with my palms up until the song finishes.
James 1:17
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.
