One Verse

Sister Johnson puts a bare paper tree on the classroom wall, and every verse a child learns by heart earns a leaf. Ana is fast — gloriously, effortlessly fast — and by the third week she has twenty-six leaves and a number she cannot stop saying out loud. Ava Grace picks one verse. A long one, with a word in it she does not understand, and she works on it for three weeks without earning a single leaf. Then Ana finishes her little sister's verse for her in front of the whole class, and is entirely correct, and something breaks anyway. When Ana's own turn comes and the words go clean out of her head, it is the sister she embarrassed who crosses the room. A story about the difference between knowing a thing and spending it. Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13:4; 1 Corinthians 8:1; Proverbs 27:2 (KJV).

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SPEAKER_00 1:19

Welcome to the Jones Family Chronicles. For life at school, home, and church is always full of lessons, laughter, and love. Meet Dad, the pastor's assistant, Mom, the heart of the home, and their five bright and lively kids. Allison, Addison, Anna, Ava Grace, and little Andy, who somehow always managed to turn ordinary days into extraordinary adventures. So gather round, open your heart, and let's discover together the joy of faith, family, and the timeless truths of God's Word. This is the Jones Family Chronicles. All right, kids, gather close. Papa has a story for you about your favorite family The Joneses. The first week of October, Sister Johnson put a paper tree up on the classroom wall and had no leaves on it at all. Every verse you learn by heart, she said, and say back to me without help gets you a leaf with your name on it. By Thanksgiving I would like this tree to be so full you can't see the branches. Anna was out of her chair before Sister Johnson finished the sentence. Anna was made out of motion. She talked through supper and through car rides, and through most of her bath, and the words came to her the way water comes downhill, without any effort at all. A verse would go into Anna once and stay there. She could not have explained how. It simply worked that way, the same as her legs worked, and she had never once had to be grateful for it. Her sister took longer. Ava Grace was six. She brought the list home and sat down with it on the kitchen floor and read all the way down it with one finger twice, taking her time about it the way she takes her time about everything. Then she picked up the fourth verse of Corinthians thirteen, four lines long, easily the longest one on the paper, with two words in it she had never heard in her life, and she carried it over to Mom. What does sufferith mean? Mom sat down the dish towel and thought about how to say it to a six year old, which is harder than saying it to anybody else. It means bearing something a long time, she said, bearing it without getting mean about it. Ava Grace looked at the paper a while longer. Okay, then that's the one, she said. Baby there are short ones on that list. I know, said Ava Grace, and took it to her room. By the end of the second week, Anna had eleven leaves on the tree. By the end of the fourth she had twenty six. And by the second week of November she had forty one. And somewhere in there she had begun to say the number out loud. She said it at breakfast, she said it in the car, she said it to Sister Alexis, who was the aide in Sister Johnson's room and was also on Sunday's cousin Alexis, and who said that's wonderful, Anna, the first four times and something shorter after that. And Anna began to help. Well, that was how she thought of it. And there was truth in it. When a boy in the row ahead stalled halfway through his verse, Anna supplied the word. When a girl said thy, where the page said thine, Anna corrected her kindly, from two seats over. She was quick and she was cheerful, and she was every single time exactly right. Nobody told her to stop. There was nothing to stop her for. She was helping. And there was a warmth that came with it that Anna never once turned over and looked at the underside of. It came when Sister Johnson wrote her name on a new leaf. It came when a second grader asked her how she did it. It came most of all in a small private way she could not have described, when somebody else got a verse wrong out loud. She only noticed that she liked walking past the tree on her way to the pencil sharpener, and that she had begun to find a great many reasons to need the pencil sharpener. They went past Brother Thompson's porch on the way home most afternoons, and most afternoons he was on it, with pickles asleep across his feet like a dropped coat. How many verses do you know, Brother Thompson? Anna asked him, because she had been asking everybody. He took the question seriously, which was one of the best things about him. He looked off at the street for a while and did the honest arithmetic. One, he said. One, mostly. Then he said it to her s then he said it to her slow the whole way through, in the voice of a man handling something he did not intend to drop. Repent and be baptized, every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. Acts two hundred thirty eight. He did not miss a word. That's the only one, Anna said. That's the one that got me, said Brother Thompson, perfectly cheerful about it. Sister Beverly's been walking me through a second, but I'm slow. She doesn't seem to mind slow, though. He scratched pickles behind the ear. Turns out a fair number of good things are worth going slow for. Anna tried to fit that into her counting the whole rest of the way home. One was a very small number. One was the smallest number there was next to none. And Brother Thompson had said it the way you'd hand somebody a cup of water, like the size of it had never really once crossed his mind. She couldn't make it come out right, so she stopped trying and told Ava Grace her number again instead. On Thursday of the fourth week, Ava Grace put her hand up. She had not put her hand up before. Five weeks of working on one verse every night, and there was still no leaf on that tree anywhere with her name on it. But she stood up beside her desk and folded her hands in front of her and started. Charity suffereth long as kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth and she stopped. It was the same place she always stopped. The word just sat out of reach, the way a word will, and her ears went red and she stood there in front of everybody working on it. Vaunteth not itself, said Anna from her seat, bright, instant, and helpful. And correct. Ava Grace did not finish. She sat down and put her hands in her lap and looked at the top of her desk. Let her find it, Anna, Sister Johnson said, quite gently, and went on to the next child. And that was the whole of what happened. Nobody was scolded, no voice was raised. There was nothing anybody in that room could have pointed to and called broken. Ava Grace did not put her hand up again for eight days. She still worked on it. Anna could hear her at night through the wall, going at the same four lines, getting the same word, and then stopping. She just stopped offering to stand up. The trouble was that Anna had been right. She turned it over that night and could not find the place where she had gone wrong. She had known the word. Her sister had not known the word. She had given her sister the word. She laid the three pieces out in a row and checked them one at a time the way you check a sum, and every single piece of it was helpful and fast and true. And somewhere underneath all those true pieces something sat crooked. Anna was seven. She did not have the word for what it was, and she was the girl who always had the word. What she kept coming back to was Ava Grace's ears going red. Mom noticed at supper, not the quiet itself, but the quiet had turned up in the wrong child. In this house, Anna going quiet is weather. You're not talking, Mom said. I'm at forty one, said Anna, which was not an answer. And Mom, who is a patient woman and could see the thing was still cooking, let it be one anyway. Down the hall later there was a flashlight on under a blanket, and a six year old going at the same four lines again and getting to the same word, and stopping. Recitation day was the second Friday in November, and Anna had decided to go for a long run of them. Five verses back to back which nobody in the room had done. She got four. The fifth one started fine, it started fine, and then it simply ended the way a road ends, and there was nothing on the other side of it. Not a wrong word, no word at all. She stood up there in front of the whole class with her mouth open and the sentence gone clean out of her head. And Anna, who talked through supper and through car rides and through most of her bath, went completely still. That was the part her sisters would talk about afterward. Anna holds still about as often as weather does. When it happens, everybody in the room feels the change in the air. Sister Alexis started forward with the page. Sister Johnson lifted one hand just slightly, and Sister Alexa stopped where she was. So the room waited. Somebody's chair creaked. The air came on and went off again. Anna stood there and could feel the whole tree on the wall behind her, every leaf on it with her name written across the middle in Sister Johnson's round hand. Forty one of them, and not a single leaf on that tree was the slightest bit of help to her right now. It is a particular thing to be the one everybody expects to know. Then a chair moved. Ava Grace got up, crossed the whole room without hurrying. She has never once hurried, and stood at her sister's elbow. She went up on her toes, and she put one word into Anna's ear quietly, so that nobody else in that room ever did find out what it was. Then she stayed there. Anna got the word, and then the rest of it came back the way the rest of it always does, all at once and in order, and she finished her fifth verse with her little sister standing warm against her. And when it was done, Ava Grace did not go back to her seat. She turned around to Sister Johnson and asked in her ordinary voice, as if she were asking for a napkin, whether she could please say hers now. She said it all the way through. She did not stop at the word. Charity suffereth long and is kind. Charity envieth not. Charity vaunteth not itself. Is not puffed up. And Anna, standing right next to her, heard her sister's one verse for the first time, really heard what was inside it, and went red from her collar to her hairline is not puffed up. It had been in there the whole time. Three weeks, every night, under a blanket with a flashlight, Ava Grace had been carrying the answer around in her mouth since October. Anna was quiet at supper, which alarmed everybody. Alison put the back of her hand against Anna's forehead and got it slapped away. Addison watched her over the top of a glass and did not say anything, which is Addison's way of paying very close attention. And Andy narrated the green beans. Then Anna put her fork down. I learned forty one verses, she said. Ava Grace learned one. She looked at her plate. Hers is the one that worked. Dad reached over to the counter where the Bible was and found the place. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth Corinthians eight and one. Puffed up, Dad said. That's bread. You've watched Mom set the sourdough on the stove and come back and find it twice the size. And there's not one crumb more bread in the bowl than there was before. It's the same bread, it's just bigger. He let that sit for a second. That's what knowing can do to a person. It'll make you take up more room without adding anything anybody can eat. And the other word, Ana said, edifieth builds, Dad said, builds something. Charity puts up a wall somebody can get in out of the rain behind. He turned a few pages and read a second one. Let another man praise thee and not thine own mouth, a stranger and not thine own lips. Proverbs twenty seven and two. You weren't wrong about the word, sweetheart, he said. You were right about it. You were just the one saying so. Mom set her cup down. Brother Thompson knows one verse all the way through, she said. He'd be the first to tell you so. It happens to be the one that saved him. He's not in any hurry about the second one either, and I've noticed he's not in much of a hurry about anything worth having lately. That's not slowness. That's a man doing a thing properly. Anna thought about that. He said Sister Beverly doesn't mind slow. No, Mom said into her cup, she surely doesn't. Later in the hallway with the toothpaste, Anna asked her sister why she had gotten up. The whole room had been sitting there, and Anna was the one who had taken her word away from her in the first place, and Ava Grace had gotten up anyway. Ava Grace considered the question with her toothbrush in her fist. I didn't want you standing up there by yourself, she said. Then, on her way to bed, over her shoulder, with the smallest possible amount of sass. Also I have one leaf now. And it's a big leaf. And Andy, who had been keeping an eye on the whole evening from the doorway in his pajamas, went and got his red ball and put it in Anna's hands. Not Ava Grace's Anna's ball. He said, patted it twice, and went to bed. Dad was sitting with mom and said The world will teach you to count what you know. We'll hand you a number and tell you the number is you. But knowing is only ever worth what you spend it on. Anna had forty one leaves on a paper tree and not one of them could help her when she was standing up there with nothing in her head. Her sister had one verse, said Dad. And she didn't recite it. She just crossed the room and spent it. Now who's ready for brownies?