Twenty Minutes Is All I Get

You get home at about half past six and you have about twenty minutes.

Not twenty minutes of free time. Twenty minutes between the door and the point where the evening starts happening to you, and then it is food and other people and by nine you are finished.

So the calculation you have run, several hundred times, is that twenty minutes is not enough to start anything, and starting something and stopping is worse than not starting, because a job left open in a small living room is worse than a job not begun.

That calculation is why nothing has changed in that place in three years.

And I want to be careful here, because the calculation is not stupid and I am not going to pretend it is.

It is true that most jobs cannot be done in twenty minutes. It is true that half a job in a small room is a nuisance. Every part of the reasoning holds, given the thing being reasoned about.

The problem is the thing being reasoned about. You have been measuring twenty minutes against jobs, and jobs are the wrong unit.

Tonight we are going to measure twenty minutes against a corner, with a timer, and with your coat still on.

Faithful in that which is least

There is a line in Luke where the Lord says something about small amounts that is almost never applied to time.

He that is faithful in that which is least is faithful also in much: and he that is unjust in the least is unjust also in much. (Luke 16:10, King James Version)

That which is least. The smallest available unit of a thing.

You are somebody Scripture says is measured in the smallest unit rather than the largest, and a small amount has never once been beneath the notice of God. Luke 16:10 makes faithfulness in the least the same faithfulness as in much, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says so to a man in a doorway at half past six.

Now look at the structure of that sentence, because it is doing something specific.

It does not say the least is a preparation for the much. It does not say be faithful in small things and you will be trusted with big ones later, which is how everybody quotes it.

It says the faithfulness is the same faithfulness. The same quality, appearing in a small quantity, and it is not lesser for being small.

You have the same thing available in twenty minutes that a whole weekend would have held, and a quantity has never once decided the quality of what happens inside it. The Spirit of God is the one who counts what is done in the least as the same as what is done in much, and it is written in Luke 16:10 that these are one faithfulness rather than two.

The corner is the unit

Now the practical part, and this is the whole of it.

A job is not the right unit for twenty minutes. A corner is.

A job has a definition and an end. Fix the shelf. Sort out the hall. Do the thing with the cables. Every one of those has a completion point built into it, which means twenty minutes always leaves it unfinished, and unfinished is the thing being avoided.

A corner has no completion point. A corner is a place. You do twenty minutes in it and then you stop, and there is nothing unfinished, because a corner was never a task with an end.

You are able to work in a unit that cannot be left half done, and twenty minutes in a place has never once produced the unfinished job you have been avoiding. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a man a unit his life can actually hold, and Luke 16:10 counts what happens in the least as the real thing.

And here is the arithmetic that nobody ever does, and it is worth doing once.

Twenty minutes, four nights a week, is eighty minutes. Over a month that is about five and a half hours. Over three months it is seventeen.

Seventeen hours is more time than you have spent on that place in three years, and it will have arrived in pieces so small that not one of them required an evening.

You are holding seventeen hours in twenty minute pieces, and a small unit has never once added up to less than a large one. The Spirit of God is the one at work in what accumulates unnoticed, and it is written in Luke 16:10 that faithfulness in the least is the same faithfulness.

And this, plainly, in these words. That place is not a report on you. Not on your work, not on your effort, not on the hours you are putting in somewhere else. A room a shift worker 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 the door at half past six.

You are a man whose worth was settled a long way from a living room, and what a tired man has not got to has never once been a statement about who he is. Luke 16:10 puts the same faithfulness in the least as in the much in Luke 16, and the same Spirit who inspired that line is in the room with you.

Twenty minutes, coat on

So here is the assignment, and the coat is not a joke.

Pick one corner tonight with your coat still on, set a timer for twenty minutes, and stop when it goes.

Coat on. Do not sit down first, do not eat first, do not have five minutes first, because the five minutes becomes the evening and everybody knows it.

Through the door, pick a corner in about four seconds, timer on, and start.

You are starting before the evening gets hold of you, and twenty minutes at the front of an evening has never once been available at the end of one. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man who starts in his coat, and Luke 16:10 counts what is done in the smallest unit as the same thing done in the largest.

Then twenty minutes in that corner. Move things. Take one thing out of it entirely. Turn something. Put something where a person would actually reach for it.

Do not evaluate. Do not step back. The corner does not have to be finished, because a corner cannot be finished, and that is precisely why it is the unit.

Then the timer goes and you stop. Mid-thing. That will feel wrong on the first two nights and it is the most important instruction here, because stopping cleanly on a timer is what makes tomorrow's twenty minutes possible.

You are stopping on a clock rather than on a judgment, and twenty minutes that ends properly has never once been the reason a man did not come back tomorrow. The Spirit of God is the one present in an unremarkable twenty minutes at the front of a tired evening, and it is written in Luke 16:10 that the least and the much carry the same faithfulness.