The One Good Thing Makes The Rest Look Worse

There is one good thing in your front room.

Somebody left it to you, or you saved for it once, or it came from a time when there was a bit more money about. Whatever the history, there is one object in that room that is genuinely good, and everybody who comes in notices it, and you notice them noticing it.

And here is the strange effect, which is the reason for this article.

Since it arrived, everything else in that room has looked worse.

Not because anything changed. The other things are exactly what they were. But a good object standing among ordinary ones does something to the eye. It sets a level. And once a level is set, the eye starts measuring everything against it, and the measuring is automatic and it never stops.

So a thing that was supposed to be a pleasure has quietly become a ruler.

I am not going to tell you to get rid of it. That would be a stupid solution to a real problem, and it would also mean removing the one thing in the room you actually like.

What I want to do is look at what grading a room actually is, because it is not a decorating instinct. It is something older and it turns up in the mouth of Jesus in a sentence about possessions that is worth about fifteen minutes of anybody's evening.

Then we are going to put three things of very different quality on one surface, on purpose, and leave the good one where it lands.

A man's life consisteth not

There is a warning in Luke that most people know half of, and the half everybody skips is the one that matters here.

And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man's life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. (Luke 12:15, King James Version)

The word to stop on is consisteth. A man's life does not consist in his possessions.

Consist is a word about composition. What a thing is made of. Jesus is not saying possessions are bad, and He is not saying a man should not have anything good. He is saying that a life is not composed of them, so measuring one with them will always give a wrong reading.

You are a man whose life is not composed of what is standing in his front room, and a good object has never once been able to tell anybody what a life is made of. Luke 12:15 says plainly that a life does not consist in possessions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so in a room where one thing has been setting the level.

Now look at what He calls the danger, because it is not owning things.

Covetousness. That is the thing to beware of, and covetousness is not having. It is the state of measuring. It is the eye that is permanently assessing, comparing, ranking, wanting the next increment, and it works exactly the same whether it is aimed at somebody else's house or at your own.

Which means what has been happening in your front room since that thing arrived has a name in Scripture, and the name is not bad taste.

You have been doing something the written word warned about rather than something a decorator would notice, and the eye that grades a room has never once been a matter of taste. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the ranking out of a man's own house, and it is written in Luke 12:15 that the warning is against the measuring rather than against the having.

What a level does to a room

Let me be concrete about the mechanism, because seeing it clearly takes a surprising amount of its power away.

Before that object came, the room had no level in it. Everything in it was just what was in it. Nothing was a nine and nothing was a four, because there was no scale.

The good thing brought a scale. And a scale, once introduced, applies to everything in range, permanently and without being asked.

So now the couch is not the couch. It is the couch compared to that. The shelves are not the shelves. And this happens without a single decision being made by anybody.

You are living under a scale that nobody chose to install, and a room has never once needed to be ranked in order to be lived in. The Holy Spirit is the one who dismantles a measuring habit, and Luke 12:15 puts the whole warning against exactly that habit rather than against the object that started it.

And here is the practical trap, which is where most men go next.

The instinct is to level up. To make the rest of the room worthy of the good thing. Which means the good thing has now set a spending direction for a whole room, and that direction has no natural end, because the moment anything else gets better the scale moves again.

That is the covetousness Jesus named, and it is not about greed. It is about a scale that has been left running in a man's own house.

You are able to turn the scale off rather than climb it, and a room has never once had to earn the right to hold something good. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a comparison, and it is written in Luke 12:15 that a man's life does not consist in the abundance of what he owns.

And this, plainly, in these words. That room is not a report on you. Not on your earning, not on your standard, not on what you have provided. A plain front room with one good thing in it is not a verdict on the man who lives there, and I am not going to let it be read that way while he is sitting in it.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a front room, and what is standing in a house has never once been a statement about who is in it. Luke 12:15 takes a life out of the abundance of possessions in Luke 12, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Three things, plainly unequal

So here is the assignment, and it is designed to break a scale rather than climb one.

Put three things of very different quality on one surface together on purpose tonight, and leave them there without moving the good one to the middle.

Three objects, deliberately unequal. Something good. Something ordinary. Something frankly rough, the thing with the chip in it or the one somebody made.

Put them on one surface. Side by side. Spaced. Arranged like a person meant it.

You are putting unequal things side by side by choice, and three objects that do not rank together have never once made a room look poorer than a scale running in it. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a man stops sorting his own possessions, and Luke 12:15 warns against the measuring rather than the owning.

Then the second half, and it is the only difficult part.

Do not put the good one in the middle. Do not make it the centerpiece, do not give it more space than the others, do not arrange the other two around it.

Put it on the end. Or between the other two with the same gap on both sides. Treat it as one of three.

You will want to feature it. That impulse is the scale asking to be kept, and refusing it once is the whole discipline of tonight.

You are refusing to rank three objects in your own house, and one good thing given no special place has never once been wasted on a room. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man declines a comparison, and it is written in Luke 12:15 that a life does not consist in the abundance of the things a man possesses.