Her Prayer and Her Superstition

The same words go at the top of every page on this site, and they matter here as much as anywhere. This is not medicine. I am not a clinician, nothing on this page is treatment, and nothing I write ever stands in for a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist. If somebody in that house is unwell, ring somebody qualified today, before you read one more line about what got handed down.

Now. Your grandmother gave you two things and they arrived in the same box.

She gave you a real faith. Genuine, unmistakable, the kind you could feel in a room. She prayed out loud in a way you have never quite managed, and you got most of what you have from her, and you would say that to anybody.

And she also gave you a set of things that are not that. Ways of doing things. Things not to say out loud in a sick house. Things to do when somebody was unwell that nobody in her line had ever once examined and that everybody performed.

And the reason you have never pulled on the second one is that they arrived wound around each other, and you are frightened that if you start pulling, the whole thing comes apart in your hands and you are left with nothing of hers at all.

A whole town gets commended for checking

There is a line in Acts about a group of people, and the thing they are praised for is exactly the thing this page has been circling.

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (Acts 17:11, King James Version)

Whether those things were so. They checked. And they did not check because they were suspicious, they checked with all readiness of mind, which means they were open and eager and still went and looked.

And the word used about them is noble. Not disloyal. Not difficult. More noble than the town that did not check.

You are permitted to go and look, and looking has never once been a failure of loyalty to anybody. Acts 17:11 commends people for verifying what they were taught and calls it the more noble course, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes the guilt out of a question.

And notice what they were checking. They were checking the preaching of Paul, which is about as high a source as a person could name, and nobody in that account treats the checking as an insult to him.

You have never once been asked to hold something without looking at it. The Spirit of God is the one who makes examining a gift a legitimate act, and it is written that the searching was done daily and was the reason they were called noble.

The two things are not wound as tightly as they feel

Let me be practical about the fear, because I think the fear is bigger than the reality.

What the fear imagines is a single tangled ball, where pulling one thread collapses the whole thing. What is actually in there, nearly always, is two separate things that were carried in the same hands.

The faith is not made of the practices. You know that already, in daylight, in the abstract. It is only at the level of feeling that they seem to be one, and the feeling is coming from the fact that both of them have her voice.

You are looking at two things that have never once depended on one another. Acts 17:11 has people hold a genuine word and examine it at the same time without either one damaging the other, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets somebody pull one thread and find nothing else moves.

And I will tell you what most people find when they do it. The faith does not go anywhere. The practices turn out to be smaller than they felt, and about half of them turn out to be kindness with a strange coat on, and the rest was fear from a hard life.

You were never given her fear as part of the inheritance, and no grandmother has ever once wanted that particular part kept. The Spirit of God is the one who separates a woman's faith from her worry without dishonoring either the woman or the faith, and what is written commends a whole town for going and finding out.

The plain routing, and no practice replaces it

Here is the part of this page that is not comfort, and on an article about what was handed down in a sick house it is the one that matters.

If somebody in that house is in trouble right now, that is 911, and nothing anybody handed down is part of that answer. If the heavy thing today is in your own mind, 988 answers, and a real person picks up. And if anybody there is unwell, ring a doctor, a nurse or a pharmacist today, and do it before you do anything that was handed to you.

You are permitted to go straight past the inherited practice to the phone, and going past it has never once been a rejection of her. Acts 17:11 sends people to check rather than to perform, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves somebody from a habit to a call.

I will say it plainly once. Nothing she gave you is medicine. Nothing on this page is either. The appointment is the part that changes anything, and that has never been in dispute.

You have a call in front of you that no practice has ever once been a substitute for. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with somebody breaking a family habit to make a phone call, and what is written praises the searching rather than the repeating.