He Has Scales, And He Uses Them

Lanterns on the wall and a table of neighbors and somebody's grandmother giving instructions about the bread from a chair she will not leave.

The best hour. Everybody knows it is the best hour and nobody says so.

Fifty-six.

Nine years of it and the last two have been a different order of thing entirely, and he does not talk about it much, and everyone at that table knows anyway because everyone at a table like that always knows.

Earlier, a man he likes very much put a hand on his shoulder on the way past and said the thing.

Compared to eternity, brother, it is nothing. Not worth comparing.

He is quoting Paul, more or less, and he means it as encouragement and it is one of the kindest men in that courtyard.

And here is what it did, which the man will never know. It did not lift anything. It filed him. Because if what he is carrying is nothing, then he has spent nine years, and two of them very hard, on a thing that does not appear on the balance sheet at all, and the natural conclusion is that he should stop mentioning it, and the further conclusion, which arrives later and quietly, is that he should stop feeling it.

If somebody has told you it is nothing compared to eternity, you know they were quoting Scripture, and you know exactly what it did to the next thing you were going to say.

He has an instrument and He uses it

Weigh it first and at its own size, because on this site the honest paragraph comes before the good one and it never gets shortened to arrive at it.

What this costs is not the nine years, or not only. It is the accounting. It costs you the standing to mention it at all, because a thing that is nothing does not get mentioned. It costs the last two years, which were a different order and which are now inside a category called nothing. It costs the hand on the shoulder, which was kind and which you cannot answer. And it costs you a conclusion that arrives late and quietly, which is that you should also stop feeling it, and that is the one that does damage.

I am not calling that small and I am not putting it beside anybody else's, because on this site there is no ranking of what people carry and there never will be. Any word from God that needs your nine years made lighter first is not one Scripture speaks and not one the Holy Spirit has ever carried.

And plainly, before we go on: if the last two years have taken you somewhere darker, as far as thinking this courtyard would be easier without you at the table, tell one living person today. Your doctor, the man with the hand on your shoulder, or a crisis line where you live, 988 by call or text in the United States and its equivalent wherever you are. Scripture asks no man to hold that alone, and the Holy Spirit has always moved through people who put lanterns up and pull a chair over.

Now, Isaiah 40, and read what God is described as doing with His hands.

Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance?Isaiah 40:12

He weighed the mountains in scales.

Now think about what that sentence assumes. A scale is an instrument for finding out what something actually weighs. You do not put a thing on a balance in order to declare it negligible. The entire purpose of the instrument is that the weight is real and you want the number.

And what is on the scale in that verse is a mountain. God is not being pictured as somebody who dismisses mass. He is being pictured as somebody who measures it, exactly, including the hills, including the dust, which He is described as putting in a measure.

You are dealing with a God who owns a scale and uses it. Isaiah 40:12 has Him weighing mountains rather than waving them away, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line about instruments and lays it on a courtyard with the lanterns lit.

Now, what Paul actually said, because your friend was quoting him and quoting him slightly off. Romans 8:18 says the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that shall be revealed. That is a sentence about a comparison between two things. It is not a sentence that says one of them is nothing.

You cannot compare a real thing to nothing. A comparison requires two weights. The whole grammar of Paul's sentence assumes that what you are carrying has mass, and then says that the other side of the scale is heavier by an amount that makes the comparison pointless.

You have a weight that Scripture treats as real enough to put on a scale. That is written into Isaiah 40:12 and assumed by Romans 8:18, and His Spirit in you is the one who keeps a comparison from turning into a dismissal.

Now let me be exact about what this does not say, because nine years of kind sentences have already been said in that courtyard.

It does not tell you what is coming will arrive on a date you can plan around, and it does not tell you anything at all about your body, and I will not predict either, because what God does there is His, in His own way.

And it does not tell you your friend was wrong to reach for Paul. He was reaching for something true, at speed, with a hand on your shoulder, which is what people do.

What it does is put the instrument back in the picture. Not worth comparing is a statement about a ratio. It is not a statement that your side of the scale is empty, and the God doing the weighing is described in Isaiah as a person who gets the number right about mountains.

You were never asked to empty your side of the balance. Scripture has Him weighing hills and dust, and the same Spirit who inspired that is the one who carries it into a courtyard at the best hour.