The Fourth Of Four

Last morning of the weekend and the kitchen looks like a kitchen looks when nine people have had breakfast in it and nobody wants to be the one to start.

Coffee going round. A baby being passed down the row the way a family passes a baby, without anybody appearing to hand it over. Her father telling the story about the car again, and her mother correcting the year again, which is part of the story now.

And the youngest of the four leaning against the counter with a dish towel, doing what she has done in this kitchen since she was nine, which is watching her family and loving them and running one small piece of arithmetic in the background.

The oldest sings. Properly sings, the way where a room goes quiet.

The second one teaches. Has since he was twenty-two, and people still write to him about it.

The third is the one everybody calls when it goes wrong at two in the morning, and she does not know how she does it either, she just does.

And her. Thirty-four, does her job well, turns up, is kind, has never once been able to answer the question at a church weekend where they go round and say what you are good at. She always says something about being organized and everybody nods and it is fine, and she goes back to her chair with the same feeling she has had since she was a girl in this kitchen.

That whatever it was, it ran out before it got to the fourth one.

Nothing here is going to sort you

Let me get it out of the way, because you have been braced since the title.

Nothing on this page is going to tell you what your gift is. Not by naming it, not by describing you closely enough that you take it as a diagnosis, and not with a list at the end you can measure yourself against until something fits. There is no questionnaire coming. There is no gentler questionnaire coming either.

And nothing here is going to tell you that you are secretly the most gifted one and everybody has missed it. That is the other kind of lie and it does not hold weight past Tuesday.

You are not the remainder in your family, and there has never been a running total that could arrive at you already spent. That is not me being sweet with you. Scripture is what says it, and the Holy Spirit has never once distributed anything on a first come basis.

A body is not a portion

The whole ache lives in one hidden assumption, and the assumption is about supply.

If gifting were a quantity, then a family with four children would be a division problem, and a fourth child could reasonably work out that she came in at the end of a line. That is not a stupid thought. It is exactly how a nine year old should reason if the premise were true.

The premise is not true, and the chapter does not argue with it so much as fail to contain it anywhere.

For as we have many members in one body, and all members have not the same office: so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and every one members one of another.Romans 12:4-5

Members one of another. Not portions of one another. Not shares.

A body does not run out of hand by the time it gets to the fourth finger. There is no ledger anywhere in the image, and there could not be, because a body is not a quantity being divided. It is a thing being made whole out of parts that are not each other.

You have a place that was never carved out of anybody else's, and your sister's gift has never once been the reason for anything you do not have. I am not being poetic there. Romans 12:5 says members one of another rather than shares of one another, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a distinction like that go from clever to load-bearing in a woman leaning on a counter with a dish towel.

Not the same office

Look again at the middle of that sentence, because it is the part that gets skipped.

All members have not the same office.

Paul says that as a plain fact, in the same tone you would say a hand and a foot do different work. He is not consoling anybody. He is not saying although you are different you still count. He is saying difference is the entire architecture, and a body made of four singers would not be a better body, it would be a lung.

The reason a fourth child feels like the remainder is that she has been measuring herself against three offices that are not hers and were never going to be.

You have not been failing at three things, and the word says plainly that members do not hold the same office, so the comparison you have been running since you were nine was never a fair test of anything. That is Romans 12:4 in its own words, and the Spirit who inspired it is not standing in that kitchen keeping score against your siblings.

And then, set

Then the sentence in Corinthians that puts the deciding somewhere a family cannot reach.

But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.1 Corinthians 12:18

God set. Not birth order. Not who got the loud voice. Not what a family noticed early and celebrated for thirty years, which they did with love and which is not a crime.

Every one of them. Individually. Which explicitly includes the fourth one.

As it hath pleased Him. A decision, made on purpose, by someone who wanted it exactly this way and was not running low.

You were set in this body by God, individually, and it pleased Him to do it, and no family arithmetic has ever had standing over that. That is 1 Corinthians 12:18 in the plainest words the language had, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes a written line like that and makes it sit down in a person rather than merely be true in the room with her.

And this is not a grievance about your family. They did nothing. They loved what they could see, which is what love does, and none of them has any idea you have been doing this arithmetic. This is about one woman and a dish towel.