The Floor The Couch And The Curtains Disagree

Sit where you normally sit and look at your living room properly, which is a thing you have not done in a while.

The floor is from one decade. The couch is from another. The curtains are from a third, and they came from the old house, and they were right in the old house.

None of the three agrees with either of the others. Not in color, not in period, not in the way that things from different times fail to sit well together.

And here is the part I actually want to talk about, because it is not the mismatch.

You have stopped looking at that room.

Not on purpose. There was no day when you decided. But at some point the eye learned that resting on that room produces a small unpleasant feeling, and so the eye stopped resting there, and now you can be in that room for two hours and never actually see it. You look at your hands, or the screen, or through the window.

A person can live in a room for years and not have looked at it, and that is a stranger loss than a mismatched floor.

So we are not going to talk about matching. We are going to get your eyes back into the room, and the way we are going to do that is by putting three of the arguing decades deliberately together on one surface, and then sitting down and looking at them on purpose for two minutes.

To every thing there is a season

There is the most quoted line in Ecclesiastes and it is usually read as being about grief and timing. It is also about accumulation.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version)

Every thing has a season. Which means, read plainly, that things belong to times.

The curtains had a season and they were right in it. The couch had a season. The floor had a season. Not one of those was a mistake at the moment it happened, and each of them was a decision made by a woman doing her best with what was possible at the time.

You are living among three right decisions made in three different seasons, and a room full of different times has never once been a room full of errors. Ecclesiastes 3:1 gives every thing its own season, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reads a room that way in a house that has been lived in a long while.

Now look at what the verse does not do, and this is the part that will help.

It does not rank the seasons. It does not say one time was the right one and the others were wasted. It puts them all under heaven, all purposed, all real.

Which means the argument between your floor and your curtains is not a fault. It is what a long life in one house looks like when it is visible.

You have a room that shows its own history, and a house that changed as its people changed has never once been a house that failed to keep up. The Spirit of God is the one who holds all the seasons of a life at once, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that every thing has a time and a purpose.

Getting the eye back

Now the real problem, which is the eye.

When a person stops looking at a room, three things happen and none of them are about decor.

The room stops getting small changes, because changes come from noticing and nobody is noticing. It stops being somewhere a person rests, because rest partly happens through the eyes. And it stops being a place, and becomes a location, which is a different thing that a body can feel.

You are able to get your eyes back into a room you have been avoiding with them, and two minutes of looking has never once been a small thing in a house that stopped being seen. The Holy Spirit is the one who returns a person to what is actually in front of them, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts every thing under a season rather than under a judgment.

And here is the mechanism, and it is oddly simple.

An eye will not rest on a whole room that it has decided is wrong. But an eye will rest happily on one small arrangement of three things, because three things is a size a person can hold.

So we do not start with the room. We start with a surface the size of a tray, and we let the eye have somewhere to land, and the rest follows on its own over weeks.

You are giving your own eye somewhere to land, and one small arrangement has never once been too little to bring a person back into a room. The Spirit of God is the one at work in what a person can actually manage tonight, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that there is a time to every purpose.

And this, plainly. That room is not a report on you. Not on your taste, not on your care, not on the years you have put into that house. A room assembled across three decades is not a verdict on the woman who assembled it, and I am not going to let it be read that way while she is sitting in it.

You are a woman whose worth was settled a long way from a set of curtains, and a room out of step with itself has never once been a statement about who lives there. Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts every thing under its own season in Ecclesiastes 3, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Three decades, one surface, two minutes

So here is the assignment.

Put three things from three different decades on one surface together on purpose tonight, and sit down and look at them for two minutes.

Three objects, and let them be openly from different times. The thing from the old house. Something from about ten years ago. Something recent.

Put them together on one small surface. A side table, the end of a shelf, a windowsill. Space between them. Arranged deliberately.

You are putting three seasons side by side by your own hand, and three objects from three decades have never once looked worse together than they did scattered. The Holy Spirit is the one at work when a woman arranges her own history on a table, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 gives every thing its own time without ranking any of them.

Then sit down and look at them for two minutes.

Two minutes is longer than it sounds. Set a clock. Look at the three things, and do not evaluate them, and do not plan anything, and if the eye slides off, bring it back.

That is the whole of the second half, and it is the part that is actually doing the work, because the eye is the thing that stopped and the eye is the thing being restarted.

You are practicing looking at your own house again, and two minutes on three objects has never once been a waste of an evening in a room that stopped being seen. The Spirit of God is the one present when a person looks properly at where she lives, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 3:1 that there is a season for every thing.