A Corner Is Not Worth Doing

You have a view about small jobs and it is worth stating plainly, because it is a real position and not a rationalization.

The view is: a corner is not worth doing.

Not because it is hard. Because it is trivial. Twenty minutes in a corner produces a corner that is slightly different, in a room that is otherwise unchanged, in a house with about nine things wrong with it. It is a gesture. It is the kind of thing people do to feel like they have done something, and you have never had much time for that in yourself or in anybody else.

And I want to grant the whole of that before I say anything against it, because there is something serious in it.

You are a man who wants the work to actually amount to something. That is not vanity, it is a proper instinct, and a lot of what passes for productivity is people making themselves feel busy, and you are right about that.

But here is the arithmetic, and it is the only argument I have.

In the last two years you have completed no jobs of any size in that house. Not one. Because the jobs that are worth doing require a resource you do not have, and the ones you could do you consider beneath doing, and so the total output of a serious man with high standards is nothing.

Twenty minutes is not being compared to a proper job. It is being compared to nothing, because nothing is what the alternative has actually been for two years.

The least of all seeds

There is a parable where the Lord picks the smallest thing available and puts it at the center of the point.

The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds. (Matthew 13:31-32, King James Version)

Which indeed is the least of all seeds. He says it. He does not hide it or work around it.

You are looking at something the Lord Himself called the least of all, and a small thing has never once been disqualified for being small. Matthew 13:31 names the smallness plainly rather than apologizing for it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man who has completed nothing in two years.

Now look at what He does with the smallness, because this is the part that answers your position directly.

He does not say the seed is secretly large. He does not say the smallness is an illusion or that it does not matter. He says it is the least of all seeds, agrees with the assessment entirely, and then puts the whole kingdom of heaven on the other side of the comparison.

The smallness is granted and the significance is asserted at the same time, and there is no contradiction in that verse.

You have a comparison Scripture makes without embarrassment, and granting that something is small has never once been the same as calling it worthless. The Spirit of God is the one who agrees about the size and disagrees about the value, and it is written in Matthew 13:31 that the least of all seeds was the one He chose.

The only size that gets done

Now the practical part, and I am going to be blunt because you will prefer it.

There are two available quantities in your life at the moment. Twenty minutes, and nothing.

That is the actual menu. The two hour job is not on it, because two hours has not appeared in two years and there is no reason to expect it next month. The weekend is not on it. The proper job done properly is not on the menu, however much it deserves to be.

So the comparison is not between a corner and a room. It is between a corner and nothing, and a serious man looking at that comparison arrives at one answer.

You are choosing between the only two quantities that exist, and twenty minutes has never once been the worse of those two. The Holy Spirit is the one who puts the actual menu in front of a man, and Matthew 13:31 grants the smallness of the seed and asserts what came out of it anyway.

And here is the thing about corners that meets your standard rather than lowering it.

Six corners is a room. Not roughly. Actually. A room is made of corners and edges and surfaces, and there is no part of a room that is not one of those, and a room that has had six twenty minute sessions in six different parts of it is a room that has been done.

You have not been rejecting corners because they are small. You have been rejecting them because you have been picturing one corner and stopping. Six of them is a proper job, executed in the only unit available, and the standard is met at the end rather than in each session.

You are able to meet a standard across six sessions rather than in one, and a proper job has never once had to arrive in a single piece to count as one. The Spirit of God is the one at work in something that accumulates, and it is written in Matthew 13:31 that what grew was out of all proportion to the seed that was sown.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on your standards, not on your seriousness, not on your capability. A house a man has not got to is not a verdict on the man, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way while he is standing in it.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a house, and an undone job has never once been a statement about who somebody is. Matthew 13:31 calls the seed the least of all and stakes the kingdom on it in Matthew 13, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Twenty minutes, without deciding first

So here is the assignment, and the second half is aimed directly at you.

Pick one corner, set a timer for twenty minutes, and do it without deciding first whether it is worth doing.

Pick it in four seconds. Timer on. Start.

You are starting before an assessment has been run, and twenty minutes has never once needed to be justified in advance to a man who has done nothing for two years. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a man past a deliberation, and Matthew 13:31 grants the least of all seeds and does not defend it.

And the second half, which is the one that will actually be difficult.

Do not evaluate it. Not at the end, not in the middle of it, and particularly not at about minute six when the thought arrives that this will make no difference.

That thought is not new information. It is the same view that has stood for two years, arriving on schedule, and it has produced nothing in that time. It has a two year track record of being both correct and useless.

Work through it. Stop at the timer. Do not stand back and assess whether it was worth it, because the assessment of one corner is not the question. The question is whether six of them make a room, and the answer to that arrives in about six weeks and not tonight.

You are refusing to assess a single session, and one corner has never once been the right unit to judge six by. The Spirit of God is the one present in twenty minutes that has not been justified, and it is written in Matthew 13:31 that the least of all seeds is the one that was sown.