I Never Turn That Light On

There is a room in your house you have not properly seen in about two years.

You go in it most days. That is the odd part. You go in to get a thing, and you know exactly where the thing is, so you go in without turning the light on, and your hand finds it, and you come back out.

In and out. Ten seconds. Light off.

You could describe that room to somebody from memory and you would get about half of it right, and the half you would get right would be the half from two years ago.

I want to say what I think is going on, and it is not laziness and it is not depression and I am not going to reach for either of those.

It is efficiency. You are a man who does not waste motion. There is no reason to light a room you are not stopping in, and switching a light on and off for ten seconds is a small pointless act, and a practical person does not do small pointless acts.

The trouble is that efficiency has a direction. It only ever removes. And when you apply it to a house for long enough, the house stops being a place you are in and becomes a set of routes between the places you actually stop.

You now live in about three rooms and travel through the rest.

So tonight the assignment is to stop in one of them.

A lamp unto my feet

There is a line about light that everybody can quote and almost nobody applies to a house.

Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. (Psalm 119:105, King James Version)

A lamp unto my feet. Not a floodlight over the whole country. A lamp, at the feet, lighting the next stretch of ground a person is actually standing on.

You are somebody God gives light to the ground under, and a house crossed in the dark has never once been the way He goes about anything. Psalm 119:105 puts the light exactly where the feet are, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a hallway a man has been navigating by memory.

Now notice what light is for in that verse, because it is not decoration and it is not comfort.

It is so a person can see where they are putting their feet. It is practical. It is about knowing the ground under a person's feet rather than assuming it because it was walked yesterday.

And that is exactly what has stopped happening in that room. You are navigating it from a two year old memory, in the dark, at speed, and it works, and working is not the same as seeing.

You have a room you know from memory rather than from sight, and a route that works has never once been the same thing as a place you have looked at. The Spirit of God is the one who lights the ground a man is actually standing on, and it is written in Psalm 119:105 that the lamp goes to the feet rather than to the horizon.

What the dark is saving you from

Let me say the harder thing, and I will say it once and then leave it.

There may be a second reason the light stays off.

A lit room asks something. It shows you the thing that has been on that surface for two years. It shows the corner that has never had anything done with it. It presents a small ongoing account of everything in there that has not been got to, and a tired man at the end of a shift does not want a bill.

Dark rooms do not send bills. That is not stupid. That is a man managing his own energy in a week that has more in it than fits.

You have been managing something real and doing it sensibly, and a light left off has never once been a verdict on the man who left it off. The Holy Spirit is the one who is honest about how much a person is carrying, and Psalm 119:105 offers light for the ground underfoot rather than a report on everything a man has not done.

But here is what the arrangement quietly costs, and it is not about the room.

A house you cross in the dark stops being somewhere you rest. It becomes a corridor with three lit stops in it. And a man who lives in a corridor does not get the thing a house is actually for, which is not storage and not efficiency but somewhere the shoulders come down.

The rooms you cross in the dark are the ones you are getting nothing back from.

You are entitled to a house that rests you rather than routes you, and a home has never once been a set of corridors between three lit rooms. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a place restful rather than merely functional, and it is written in Psalm 119:105 that the word lights the path a man is walking on.

And here is the last thing before the assignment, said plainly.

Whatever that light shows tonight is not a report on you. Not the surface, not the corner, not the two years. A room in a house where a man is working full time and keeping everybody fed is not evidence about him, and I am not going to allow it to be read that way when the switch goes on.

You are looking at a room rather than at a scorecard, and what a lamp shows has never once been a judgment on the person holding it. The written word gives the light for the feet rather than for an inspection in Psalm 119:105, and the same Spirit who gave that line is standing in the doorway with you.

The light, ten minutes, one thing

So here is the assignment.

Turn the light on in that room tonight, stay in it ten minutes, and put one thing of yours down in there before you go.

Switch on. Actually on, the main light or a lamp, and then do not leave.

Ten minutes on a clock. Not doing anything. Standing or sitting in a lit room that you normally cross in the dark, looking at it, which is a thing you have not done since some point two years ago.

You are seeing a room in your own house for the first time in two years, and ten minutes under a light has never once been a waste of an evening. The Holy Spirit is the one in that room with a man who is finding it slightly strange to be standing still in there, and Psalm 119:105 is about a light for the ground a person is on rather than for the ground ahead.

You will want to start doing things. Resist that tonight. Doing something is the next week's problem. Tonight the job is to be in there with the light on for ten minutes, because a man cannot decide anything about a room he has not looked at.

Then, before you go, put one thing of yours down in there.

Not a job. A possession. The book you are on. Your reading glasses. The mug you actually use. Something that means you now have a reason to walk into that room and stop, tomorrow, on purpose.

You are giving yourself a reason to stop in a room you have only ever passed through, and one object of your own has never once been too small a claim to make on a space. The Spirit of God is the one at work in an ordinary object left on an ordinary surface, and it is written in Psalm 119:105 that the lamp is given for the feet that are actually walking.