I Look At The Whole House And Do Nothing

You stand in the doorway and you look at the whole thing and then you go and do something else.

That has happened about eleven times this month. It is not a decision either. It is a sequence that runs on its own: stand, look, feel the size of it, leave.

And I want to be precise about what happens in the looking, because it is the whole subject of this article.

When you look at that room, you do not see a room. You see a list. The floor and the corner and the thing that has been wrong for two years and the shelf and the whole question of what this room is even for, all of it at once, in about four seconds.

And a human being cannot begin on a list of nine things. Nobody can. That is not a weakness in you, it is a fact about how attention works, and the paralysis is the correct response to being shown nine things at once.

So the standing in the doorway is not procrastination. It is your mind being handed an impossible instruction and declining it.

Which means the fix is not more resolve. The fix is a smaller instruction.

The day of small things

There is a line in Zechariah aimed at people looking at something unfinished and finding it too small to bother with, and it turns the whole question round.

For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven; they are the eyes of the LORD, which run to and fro through the whole earth. (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)

Who hath despised the day of small things. That is a question with an edge on it.

You are standing in a day of small things that Scripture refuses to have despised, and a small beginning has never once been the wrong size to be watched by God. Zechariah 4:10 puts the eyes of the Lord on exactly this kind of day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a woman in a doorway.

Now look at what is in the hand in that verse, because it is a very specific object.

A plummet. A plumb line. The tool a builder uses to check that one small section is true.

Not a plan of the whole temple. Not a drawing of the finished thing. A plumb line, which is used on one wall at a time and tells you nothing whatsoever about the overall project.

You have a tool for one section rather than a picture of the whole thing, and a plumb line has never once been able to tell anybody about a building. The Spirit of God is the one whose eyes are described as running through the whole earth in that verse while the man in it holds a tool for one wall, and it is written in Zechariah 4:10 that this is the day not to despise.

An unfinishable instruction

Now the practical part, and this is the piece that has been missing.

Every instruction ever given about that room has been unfinishable.

Sort out the living room. Get on top of the house. Do something about that corner, which sounds small and is not, because do something about has no end point in it and so the work continues until a judgment says it is enough, and no judgment ever does.

An unfinishable instruction produces exactly what has been happening. You stand in the doorway, your mind checks whether the instruction can be completed, the answer is no, and it declines.

You are able to be given an instruction that can actually be completed, and a job with no end point has never once been startable by anybody. The Holy Spirit is the one who hands a person something that can be finished, and Zechariah 4:10 puts a tool for one section into the hand of the man doing the work.

And here is why the timer is not a gimmick, and I want to be clear about this because it looks like one.

A timer converts an unfinishable instruction into a finishable one. Twenty minutes has an end point that is not a judgment. It arrives whether the corner is done or not, whether it looks better or not, and whether anybody is satisfied or not.

That means the instruction can be completed. And an instruction that can be completed can be started, and the standing in the doorway stops, because there is nothing left for the mind to decline.

You are able to make an instruction finishable by putting a clock on it, and twenty minutes has never once required a judgment about whether it was enough. The Spirit of God is the one at work in something a person can actually complete, and it is written in Zechariah 4:10 that the day of small things is not to be despised.

And this, plainly, in these words. That house is not a report on you. Not on your capability, not on your effort, not on whether you are somebody who copes. A house that has produced eleven doorway visits this month is not a verdict on the woman standing in the doorway, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a living room, and a house that has not been got to has never once been a statement about who lives in it. Zechariah 4:10 refuses to have the day of small things despised in Zechariah 4, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the doorway with you.

One corner, twenty minutes

So here is the assignment, and every part of it is chosen to be finishable.

Pick one corner, set a timer for twenty minutes, and stop when it goes.

One corner. Pick it in about four seconds and do not choose carefully, because careful choosing is a version of the doorway.

Twenty minutes on a timer, out loud, where you can hear it from inside the room.

You are able to complete an instruction tonight, and one corner with a clock on it has never once been the same instruction as sorting out a room. The Holy Spirit is the one who is present in something small enough to be finished, and Zechariah 4:10 puts a plumb line for one section into a working hand.

Then work in that corner until the timer goes, and here is the crucial part.

Stop when it goes. Not when the corner is done, because that is a judgment and judgments are the thing that made this unfinishable. When the timer goes. Mid-item if necessary.

And then the instruction is complete. Not attempted. Complete. Twenty minutes was the instruction and twenty minutes happened, and the corner being unfinished is not a failure of anything, because the corner was never the instruction.

Say it if it helps. That was the whole job and it is done.

You are completing an instruction rather than assessing a corner, and twenty minutes that ended on a clock has never once been an unfinished piece of work. The Spirit of God is the one who counts what was actually asked for, and it is written in Zechariah 4:10 that the day of small things is watched rather than despised.