I See It Every Day And I Have Stopped Seeing It

You go past it on the way to the kettle.

Every morning, in the same four seconds, in the same direction. And you do not look at it any more, which most people would describe as having got used to it.

That is not what is happening. Something smaller and more expensive is happening, it takes about half a second, and it has happened roughly four hundred times.

Here is what it is. Your eye lands on it. Some part of you registers the thing you said you would do. And a very small amount of something goes out of you, not enough to notice on any given morning, and then the kettle boils and the day starts.

Four hundred times is the part that matters. Nobody is defeated by an unpainted wall. People are worn down by four hundred half seconds, and because no single one of them is significant, it never once gets identified as the thing that is happening.

So there is a wall, and there is a year, and there is a low grade sense of being somebody who does not finish things. And that last part is not true, and it is the most expensive thing in the house.

You are a man being asked a question and not handed a verdict, and four hundred half seconds have never once been evidence about your character.

Is it time for you

There is a question in Haggai asked of people who had stopped in the middle of something, and the tone of it is not what anybody expects.

Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? (Haggai 1:4, King James Version)

Is it time for you.

The context is a building project abandoned partway. The foundation was laid and the work stopped, for reasons that were entirely understandable at the time, and years went by, and everybody got on with their own houses while the thing stood unfinished.

And God asks a question rather than issuing an accusation. He does not tell them what they are. He points at the situation and asks them to look at it.

You are being asked to look rather than sentenced for stopping, and heaven has never once opened this conversation with a verdict. Haggai 1:4 puts a question in front of people who stopped part way, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a mercy rather than an accusation.

That is easy to miss. He could have opened with a finding. Instead there is a question, which requires them to actually look at the unfinished thing they had stopped seeing, and looking is precisely what nobody had done for years.

And notice the word waste. Not ruined. Not lost. Lying waste, which is a thing that is still there and could still be built, and which is doing nothing in the meantime.

You have something standing in your house that the word calls waste rather than ruin, and lying waste has never once meant lying beyond use. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps the distinction in front of a tired man, and Haggai 1:4 chose a word about idleness rather than a word about damage.

Seeing and looking are different acts

Here is the practical claim, and it is most of the article.

Nobody has looked at that wall in about a year. It has been seen four hundred times and looked at none, and those are not the same operation.

Seeing is what the eye does at speed on the way past. Looking is standing in front of a thing with your body stopped, on purpose, for long enough that it becomes a specific object rather than a symbol.

You are living with a symbol and not with a wall, and a symbol has never once been a thing anybody could pick up a brush and work on. Haggai 1:4 asks the question in order to make people look at an actual site, and the Holy Spirit is the one who turns an argument about a man into a job with a size.

And the reason it matters is that a symbol cannot be worked on. At the moment that wall is not a wall, it is evidence in a case about your character, and nobody starts a job that is evidence. It is far too heavy to pick up.

You have been carrying something much heavier than paint, and it has never once been the wall that was heavy. The written word asks a question about an abandoned site rather than about the people standing near it, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man stand in front of his own unfinished work without flinching.

Thirty seconds of contact turns a symbol back into a surface. A surface has a specific amount of work remaining, most likely much less than the version you have been carrying, and a specific amount of work is a thing a person can consider doing on a Tuesday.

Put your hand on it

So here is the assignment and it is deliberately absurd.

Walk up to it and put your hand flat on it for thirty seconds.

Not look at it. Touch it. Palm flat against the surface, the way you would test a radiator, and leave it there while you count.

You have a hand that can reach that wall tonight, and putting a palm on something has never once obliged anybody to start working on it. Haggai 1:4 asks the question and does not assign the task, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while thirty seconds produce absolutely nothing.

You are not going to work on it. You are not going to plan it. You are not going to work out what it needs, and if you find yourself doing that, come back to your hand.

You have a hand that cannot be argued with, and a surface under a palm has never once been able to pretend to be a symbol. Touch is worth more than looking here for exactly that reason. It is cold or it is not. It is rough or it is smooth. It is filled or it is not filled. Every one of those is information, and a symbol has none of those properties. Haggai 1:4 sends people to look at an actual site, and the Spirit of God is the one who puts real information back into a hallway.

And then take your hand off and walk away. Do nothing tonight.