I Counted Them And That Was A Mistake

You counted them on a Sunday afternoon about two years ago and the number was forty one.

Before that Sunday there was a pile. Some books. A shelf and a bit. And then you counted, and now there is a number, and the number has been in your head roughly twice a week ever since.

That is the whole of what changed. Nothing was added and nothing was read. A quantity got converted into a figure, and a figure behaves completely differently in a person's mind than a pile does.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met them both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and no shelf of what a man ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book, and mostly it makes the number forty two.

And nobody is saying one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Being told again by a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the number, because counting is not the mistake and the number is not the problem.

The problem is who is holding it. In your hands forty one is a verdict. It was never supposed to be in your hands.

He telleth the number of the stars

There is a sentence in Psalm 147 where God is described doing arithmetic, and then doing something else with the result.

He telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names. (Psalm 147:4, King James Version)

He telleth the number. He counts. That is a striking thing to say about God, because it means counting is not beneath Him and it is not a fault in the counter.

And then the second half, which is the whole verse: he calleth them all by their names.

The number does not stay a number. It resolves immediately into names. He does not have a total, He has a list, and the list is made of individuals He can address one at a time.

That is a completely different way of holding a quantity, and it is the one this verse offers.

You are looking at a count that resolves into names, and forty one has never once been the same thing as an accusation. Psalm 147:4 has God tell the number and then call every one of them by name rather than leave a total standing, and the Holy Spirit is the one saying that over a study on a Sunday afternoon.

There is one more thing in it worth having, and it is the verse next door.

The line immediately before this one says He heals the broken in heart and binds up their wounds. That is the neighborhood this arithmetic sits in. Counting and binding up wounds are in consecutive sentences on purpose.

You have a God who counts and binds up in the same breath, and a number in your own head has never once come from the same hand that made it. It is written he healeth the broken in heart, he bindeth up their wounds, he telleth the number of the stars, the counting sits next to the healing in that psalm, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly here.

A pile is a place and a number is a debt

Here is the mechanism, and it happened in about four minutes on a Sunday.

A pile is a location. A number is a balance.

Before the count, those books were a place in your house. Places do not demand anything. You walk past a shelf, something catches your eye, you take it down, and the rest of the shelf has no opinion about it.

After the count, they are a total. And a total sits in a different mental drawer, next to the other totals a man carries, all of which are about things owed. Nothing in your head files forty one as a happy fact. It goes straight in with the numbers that mean behind.

And a balance cannot be browsed. You do not casually take an item off a balance. So the count did not just add a figure, it changed what kind of object the whole shelf is.

You are carrying a balance where a place used to be, and one afternoon of counting has never once changed what those books are. Psalm 147:4 resolves a number into names instead of leaving it as a sum, and the Holy Spirit is present with a man who converted a shelf into a figure and has been paying interest on it.

And there is a second layer, and it is the small cruelty in it.

The number is the only fact about the shelf you now know reliably. You could not tell somebody what most of those books are about. But you can say forty one instantly, which means the one thing you have ready about your own reading is the accusation.

You have forty one individual books and one number about them, and a total has never once told the truth about anything on a shelf. The written word has the counting resolve immediately into names that can be addressed one at a time, and His Spirit is the one who breaks a sum back into a list.

One off the pile, without counting what is left

So here is the assignment, and the second half is the discipline in it.

Take one off the pile tonight and put it somewhere you actually sit, without counting what is left.

One book. Off the shelf, off the stack, wherever they live. Chosen badly is fine.

And do not count. Not before, not after, and do not do the subtraction in your head. Forty is not the win here and it is not the point, and getting to forty would just be paying down a balance that should never have existed.

Nobody is asking you to reduce the shelf either. It stays exactly as it is.

You have a count that resolves into names, and one figure has never once told the truth about a shelf. The Holy Spirit is the one in that study with you, and Psalm 147:4 has God tell the number of the stars and then call every single one of them by name.

Then put the one somewhere ordinary: the chair, the counter, the arm of the couch.

Here is why the not counting matters more than the moving.

The count is the thing that turned a place into a balance. Doing the arithmetic again, even once, in either direction, keeps the shelf in the wrong drawer. Taking one and refusing the subtraction is what starts moving it back.

And if the number arrives in your head anyway, which it will, do not argue with it. Just do not complete it. Let it sit there unresolved and go and read.

You are able to take one book and refuse the arithmetic, and one book carried to a chair has never once needed a total to justify it. Psalm 147:4 says he telleth the number of the stars; he calleth them all by their names, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a man who took one down and did not count.

Read ten pages of it if you want to. Not required. Moving one and not counting was the whole assignment.

You have a shelf that is a place and not a balance, and a number you worked out on a Sunday has never once had authority over a man. It is written he calleth them all by their names, the total dissolves into individuals in the same sentence, and the Spirit of God is dissolving this one.