Counted Is Not The Same As Measured

There is a verse about hair being numbered that gets read to women in your position, and it is meant kindly, and I have watched it land wrong more than once.

The trouble is that the word numbered arrives into a mind that is already doing arithmetic, and so it gets heard as more arithmetic, and a woman who has been counting for two years hears God counting too.

That is not what the verse says, and the difference is the whole of this article.

So let me put the two words side by side before we go anywhere near a passage.

Counting and measuring are not the same operation.

Measuring compares a quantity to a standard. There is a right amount, the amount you have is above it or below it, and a judgment comes out at the end. That is what happens at your mirror, and it is what has happened every day for about two years.

Counting establishes that each thing is there. It produces no judgment at all. A shepherd counting a flock at dusk is not assessing the flock. He is finding out whether anybody is missing.

You are doing one of those operations and being subjected to the other, and the two have never once been the same act. The Holy Spirit is what gives a woman two words where she had one, and Isaiah 40 has God counting something enormous and calling every part of it by name.

The number that has been running

Look at what your own counting actually is.

There is a sense of a quantity. It is not precise, it could not be defended, and it is compared each day against a memory of a previous quantity, and the comparison produces a verdict.

Every part of that is measurement. There is a standard in it, and the standard is a former state of your own head, and the current amount is always below it.

You are being measured against a former version of your own head, and no standard built that way has ever once been a fair one. Isaiah 40 says he bringeth out their host by number and calleth them all by names, and the Spirit of God is what puts a counting where a measurement used to be.

Which is a measurement designed so the result is always negative. There is no possible morning where that comparison comes out well, because the standard is behind you and the direction is fixed.

You are running a measurement whose result was decided before the morning started, and no reading of it has ever once come out otherwise. Scripture in Isaiah 40 shows a counting that produces no verdict at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a counting from a measuring in a woman's hands.

And notice what this has done to the ordinary business of having hair.

You cannot brush it without an assessment. You cannot wash it without a finding. The thing has become entirely quantitative, which is a strange fate for a part of a body, and it means there is no version of touching your own head that is only touching your own head.

You are unable to do a plain thing plainly, and a body part has never once been meant to be an ongoing measurement. The written word in Isaiah 40 counts without weighing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who gives a woman back an act that has no number in it.

He calleth them all by names

There is a verse near the end of Isaiah 40 about counting on a scale nobody can imagine.

Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might, for that he is strong in power; not one faileth. (Isaiah 40:26, King James Version)

He brings out their host by number. He is counting stars.

And then the phrase that changes what kind of counting it is. He calleth them all by names.

That is not measurement. Nobody names a quantity. You name a thing you know individually, and the naming is what tells you the counting is relational rather than numerical.

You are inside a counting that names rather than one that weighs, and there has never once been an assessment attached to it. It is written in Isaiah 40 that He calleth them all by names, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman hear the difference between two operations.

And the last clause is the one to carry.

Not one faileth.

That is the entire purpose of a count like that. It is not to establish a total. It is to establish that nothing is missing, nothing is unaccounted for, and nothing has gone without being noticed.

That is the opposite of what your counting does. Yours exists to find out how much less. His exists to establish that nothing has slipped past unseen.

You are counted so that nothing goes unnoticed, and that counting has never once been done to find out how much less there is. The Spirit of God is what puts a woman inside a count that keeps rather than one that grades, and the written word says not one faileth.

Ten minutes with no number in it

So here is the assignment, and it is defined by what is absent from it.

Do one warm slow thing for your hair tonight with no number involved anywhere.

No counting. No comparing. No looking at the brush, no looking at the floor, no assessment of any kind at the beginning, the middle, or the end.

Warm water. Unhurried hands. Longer than is necessary, and then stop, and go to bed.

You are stopping without a result, and going to bed has never once been the same as giving up on something. Isaiah 40 says he calleth them all by names, and the Holy Spirit is what lets a woman be counted without ever being assessed.

The absence of the number is the entire exercise. Everything else is ordinary. What makes it different from every other night in two years is that nothing is being established.

And you will notice how strong the pull is. That is worth noticing, because a pull that strong is not curiosity. It is a habit, and habits are much easier to work with than facts.

You are able to do one thing tonight with no quantity in it anywhere, and there has never once been a version of this in two years that was not a measurement. The written word in Isaiah 40 counts by names and finds nothing missing, and the Holy Spirit is what turns ten warm minutes into care rather than into an inventory.