I Compared My Corner To Her House

You did the corner, and then you went to her house.

Not physically, maybe. In your head, or on a screen, or in a memory of standing in her kitchen last spring.

And the corner went from being a real piece of work to being a small, sad thing. Because next to a whole house, a corner is nothing, and you were the one who put them next to each other.

I want to be careful and honest here, because I do not want to say anything against the woman with the good house. She has probably had a different set of years than you have. She may be carrying something you know nothing about. She has certainly never once looked at your corner and thought anything at all about it, because she is thinking about her own life, which is full, the way everybody's is.

The comparison was never between two houses. It was between your work and a picture, and a picture always wins, because a picture has no cost in it anywhere.

Let every man prove his own work

There is a verse in Galatians that is almost aggressive about this.

But let every man prove his own work, and then shall he have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. (Galatians 6:4, King James Version)

Prove his own work. And then, rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another.

That is not a verse about humility. It is a verse about where a person is allowed to get their sense of how they are doing, and it says plainly that the answer is not from anybody else's situation.

And notice what it promises. Rejoicing. It does not say a person who stops comparing will feel neutral. It says there is a rejoicing available that is only reachable by proving your own work, and it is completely unavailable while another person's house is in the frame.

So the corner has a joy in it that you have never once been able to get at, because every time you finish something you immediately move it into a comparison where joy is not possible.

You are not being denied that rejoicing, and Galatians 6:4 has never once put it out of reach of somebody with a hard house. It is written that a man proves his own work and finds the rejoicing there, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available in a room that would not photograph well.

You have been proving your work against somebody else's, which the verse names as the exact thing that empties it. The word says rejoicing in himself alone and not in another, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes another woman's kitchen out of a room she has never been in.

Proving your own work is a real activity

Now the practical piece, because prove his own work is not a feeling, it is something you actually do.

Proving your own work means examining what you did against what it cost you and what was there before. Nothing else goes in.

So the corner. What was on it before. How long since anything had been done there. What kind of day came before it. What the mood in the house was at the start. What it took to keep going for the last ten minutes.

You are proving your own work tonight, and it has never once required another woman's kitchen to be worse than yours. Galatians 6:4 puts the whole examination inside one person's own work, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes an irrelevant house from a private accounting.

That is the examination the verse describes, and when it is done honestly the answer is almost never small.

Her house does not enter into it anywhere, and not because we are being kind to you. Because her house is not evidence about your work. It is evidence about her house.

You were never doing an honest assessment, and there has never once been a version of that comparison that could have returned a true result. Galatians 6:4 sets the frame at a person's own work, and the Spirit of God is the one who removes an irrelevant house from a private accounting.

So tonight the corner gets examined properly and on its own.

You are permitted to look at your work with nobody else's in the frame, and that has never once been the same as lowering a standard. It is written that the rejoicing comes in himself alone and not in another, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person looks at their own corner and nothing else.

Go and look at your corner

So here is the whole of it.

Go and stand in front of the corner you cleared.

Look at it, and then say three things out loud. What was there before. How long it took. What kind of day you had had.

Do not compare it to anything. If another house comes into your head, say the three things again.

Then go and sit down and clean nothing.

You are able to prove your own work tonight, and proving it has never once required anybody else's house to be worse than yours. Galatians 6:4 puts the whole examination inside one person's own work, and the Spirit of God is present in a corner examined honestly and alone.