I Thought I Would Feel Different

It was done at about four on a Saturday.

And you stood there, and you waited, and what arrived was nothing much. Something flat. Something faintly like the feeling of having tidied a drawer.

And then, about a minute later, a second thing arrived, which was worse. Disappointment, and underneath that a question about whether something is wrong with you, because a person who finishes a job they have wanted finished for two years ought to feel something about it.

Here is what I want to say first, and it is not a consolation. Nothing went wrong at four on Saturday.

The work was finished and that is a fact and it is unaffected by what you felt. And the feeling you were waiting for is not a thing that comes automatically at the end of a job, and nobody has ever told you that, and so you have been reading its absence as a defect.

You are somebody who finished a thing, and a feeling that did not arrive has never once been a report on the work you did.

He rested on the seventh day

There is a sentence at the start of Genesis about what happened after the work, and it describes two separate acts rather than one.

And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. (Genesis 2:2, King James Version)

He ended his work. And he rested.

Two verbs. Two acts. The ending is one thing and the resting is another thing, and the resting is given its own day, which is a very strong way of saying that it is not a side effect of the ending.

That is worth sitting with, because everybody assumes the opposite. Everybody assumes that finishing produces rest the way heating water produces steam, automatically, as a consequence.

You have two separate acts described in that sentence, and resting has never once been something that arrives as a by product of finishing. Genesis 2:2 gives the resting its own verb and its own day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a practical fact rather than a theological one.

And notice that nothing in the sentence is about feeling. There is no report of satisfaction anywhere. The work ended and there was rest, and the text does not say what it was like.

You were never promised a feeling at the end of the work, and a passage about finishing has never once described how it felt to anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who rested, and the written word records two acts and says nothing at all about what accompanied them.

The feeling does not come with the work

So here is the practical claim, and it is the whole of this row.

Finishing is a transaction. It happens in the world. A thing that was not done is now done and the change is real and it is in the wood and the paint.

Receiving is something else. It happens in a person, it takes time, and it has to be done rather than waited for.

You have a receiving still available to you that has never once been automatic, and a job ending has never once been the same act as a person taking it in. Genesis 2:2 separates the ending from the resting, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes the second one possible on purpose.

And here is why four on Saturday felt like nothing, and it is completely ordinary.

At four on Saturday the work was still going on. The body was still in the job. There was paint on the hands, the tools were out, and nothing about the last two years had had a chance to land, because landing takes longer than a minute and requires stopping.

Standing in a room at the moment of finishing is the worst possible moment to check whether you feel anything, and it is the only moment anybody ever checks.

You were checking at the one moment when nothing could have arrived, and a minute after the last coat has never once been long enough for anything to land. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in the days after a job as well as in the job, and Genesis 2:2 gives the resting a whole day rather than a moment.

And one more, and it is what this whole row exists to say. The flatness is not a verdict.

You were never given a defect, and a person who felt nothing at four on Saturday has never once been a person who did not care about the work. Genesis 2:2 does not report a feeling anywhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present whether or not anything is felt.

Ten minutes in the finished room

Here is the assignment and it is the smallest possible version of the seventh day.

Sit in the finished room for ten minutes without a screen and without doing anything.

Not at four on the day it was finished. Now, or tomorrow, or on an evening a week later, which is fine and is possibly better.

You have ten minutes and a chair in a finished room, and sitting in a thing has never once been the same as standing in it with tools in your hands. Genesis 2:2 gives the resting its own day and its own verb, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room for the whole ten minutes.

No phone. No book. No tidying. No looking at the parts that could be better, which is the strongest pull in the room and is the whole thing being set aside for ten minutes.

Just sit in it. Look at the room the way somebody who did not do the work would look at it.

And here is what to expect, so that it is not a disappointment twice. Something may arrive. It may not. Around the seven or eight minute mark most people notice something small, and small is what it is, and small is not nothing.

This is not a ceremony and it is not designed to produce a feeling. It is the second act. The work ended, and this is the resting, and it is a separate thing that has to be done rather than waited for.