The Streak Is At Four Hundred And Nine Days

It started as a small thing and it has become the most consistent fact of her life.

Four hundred and nine days. She has done it in a hospital waiting room. She has done it at half past eleven at night in a car outside a party because she suddenly remembered. She did it on the day her grandmother died, and she is not sure how she feels about that now.

Her mother is proud of her about it and mentions it to people.

And here is what she noticed about six weeks ago, and she has not been able to unnotice it.

She is protecting a number.

The tell was small. There was an evening where she opened it at about eleven forty, tired, and did the three minutes, and closed it, and she could not have told you thirty seconds later what she had read. And there was no shame in it at the time. There was relief. The number was safe.

Relief that the number was safe.

She sat with that for a while.

Because she started this for a reason. She could tell you the reason: she was twenty-four and everything was scattered and she wanted something with God that did not depend on how she felt on a given day.

And it worked. That is the confusing part. It has worked completely and she is not scattered any more and there is a whole shape to her life that was not there before.

And somewhere in four hundred and nine days the thing she was doing it for stopped being in the room, and what is left is a count and a small daily task and a mother who is proud of her.

She cannot say any of that to anybody. Everybody in her life thinks this is her greatest spiritual achievement, and it may be, and it is also the thing she is currently most worried about.

And you have a count. A streak, a chapter a day, a Sunday you have not missed. And you have started protecting it, and you have not been able to say so to anybody who admires you for it.

The invitation was about a face

There is a verse in Psalm twenty-seven where a man quotes an invitation and then quotes his own answer to it, and both halves are about the same thing.

You have said, "Seek my face." My heart says to you, "Your face, Lord, do I seek."Psalm 27:8

Seek my face.

Not seek my instructions. Not maintain the arrangement, and not keep the thing going. Face, which is the word for the front of a person, the part you look at when you are with somebody.

And his answer uses the same word straight back, which is what people do when they have understood exactly what was asked.

You have been invited to a face, and that is a different invitation from the one you have been answering. It is written, You have said, seek my face; my heart says to you, Your face, Lord, do I seek (Psalm 27:8), and it is the Holy Spirit who moves a heart to answer an invitation like that, which is not something anybody produces by turning up daily.

Now the reason you started, because it was a good one.

Twenty-four, everything scattered, wanting something with God that did not depend on how you felt.

That was wise. That is more sense than most people have at twenty-four, and the reason it worked is that it was the right instinct: a life with God that is only available on good days is not available on most days.

Nothing about the last four hundred and nine days is being called a mistake.

You built something that held you and it did hold you, and it is not being taken away from you now. Scripture says whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been in an eleven forty car outside a party, which is not a wasted three minutes even if you cannot remember what you read.

And the relief.

That is the thing that made you sit still for a while, and it is worth understanding rather than being frightened by.

Relief that the number was safe is what any of us feel when a load bearing thing survives. The number had become load bearing. That happened slowly and you did not choose it, and it happens to every counted practice eventually, including good ones, because a count is designed to be protected and a person is not.

You are not corrupt for feeling relief, you have simply discovered which thing you were carrying. It is written that the Lord looks on the heart (1 Samuel 16:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who showed you that on an ordinary evening at eleven forty, which is a kindness and not an accusation.

And the day your grandmother died.

You did it that day, and you are not sure how you feel about it now, and that uncertainty is the honest kind.

Here is one way to look at it. A young woman whose grandmother had just died opened something and read three minutes of Scripture. Whatever the count was doing, that also happened, and God was not absent from it, and there is no version of that day where reading a psalm was a bad thing to have done.

You were with Him on the hardest day of that year and the count was not what made that true. Scripture says the Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18), and it is His Spirit who was near on that specific day, before the app opened and after it closed.