There Is So Much Undone I Cannot Pick

There are eighteen of them.

And you have been standing in the middle of the house for about four minutes, which is what happens most evenings, because the only thing available to do is choose and choosing is the thing that cannot be done.

Here is why it cannot be done, and it is not indecision.

Picking one is not picking one. Picking one is picking one and declining seventeen. And declining seventeen means, for the rest of that evening, actively not doing seventeen things that all need doing, and the seventeen are louder than the one.

So the evening resolves the way it always resolves. Nothing gets chosen, because not choosing feels more neutral than choosing, and the four minutes in the hallway are the whole of the effort the house gets.

And what nobody says is that the freeze is not a failure of will. It is what happens when a person is required to hold eighteen things at once in order to pick between them, and nobody can hold eighteen things at once.

You are somebody standing in front of one thing, and a list of eighteen has never once been a thing anybody was asked to face all at once.

The steps of a good man are ordered

There is a line in the thirty seventh psalm about how a life actually moves, and the unit it uses is a small one.

The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD: and he delighteth in his way. (Psalm 37:23, King James Version)

The steps of a good man.

Steps. Not the journey, not the plan, not the route. Steps, which are singular things, taken one at a time, each one about two feet long.

That is a very small unit for a psalm to choose. It could have said the way, or the path, or the whole course of a life, and it says steps, and the smallness of the word is not accidental.

You have a life that is described in steps rather than in routes, and a single step has never once been too small a thing for God to have ordered. Psalm 37:23 chooses the smallest available unit on purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a relief rather than a diminishment.

And the verb is ordered. Arranged, put in a sequence, set in order. Which means the steps come in an order rather than all at once, and the ordering is being done by somebody other than the person taking them.

Nobody in that verse is being asked to see the sequence. They are being asked to take a step.

You were never being asked to hold the whole sequence, and an ordered path has never once required the one walking it to know the order. The Spirit of God is the one doing the ordering, and the written word puts that work on His side and leaves the stepping on yours.

Eighteen is not a question anybody can answer

So here is the practical claim, and it takes the shame out of the four minutes in the hallway.

A choice between eighteen options is not a difficult choice. It is not a choice at all in any usable sense, because the mind cannot hold eighteen things in comparison and so the comparison never completes.

That is not weakness of character. It is a capacity limit, the same way a person cannot remember a nineteen digit number, and nobody has ever called that a moral failure.

You are running into a limit and not into a fault, and eighteen items held at once has never once been a thing any mind could do. Psalm 37:23 works in steps rather than in sequences, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reduces a thing to a size a person can actually handle.

And here is the second half, which is the practical move.

The way out is not to choose better. It is to stop choosing. Specifically, it is to take the choosing out of your head and put it into your hand.

Pointing at something with a finger is not a decision in the way that deciding is. It happens faster than the comparison, and once the finger is on an item the comparison has nothing left to do, because the thing has already been picked.

You have a hand that can end a four minute freeze in one second, and pointing at something has never once required the other seventeen to be weighed. The Spirit of God is the one who orders the steps, and Psalm 37:23 asks nobody to see the arrangement before they move.

And one more, and it is what makes the pointing survivable. It does not matter which one.

You were never going to pick the wrong one, and an item on that list has never once been the wrong item to have started with. Psalm 37:23 orders the steps rather than grading them, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in a step that nobody chose carefully.

Point at one, and do fifteen minutes

Here is the assignment and the first part of it takes one second.

Point at one item on the list with your finger.

If the list is on paper, put your finger on it. If it is in your head, go and stand in front of one of the actual things and point at it. The physical gesture matters and this is not a metaphor.

You have one second and one finger tonight, and a thing pointed at has never once needed to be justified against seventeen others. Psalm 37:23 works in steps taken singly, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing there while a person picks without deliberating.

Do not think first. The point of pointing is that it beats the comparison, and if you think first the comparison starts and you are back in the hallway.

Then do that one for fifteen minutes. Set a timer.

And while the work is going on, the other seventeen will arrive. That is expected. They will say that this one is not the most urgent, which may well be true, and it does not matter, because the alternative on offer tonight was never a better item. The alternative was four minutes in the hallway and then nothing.

Then stop at fifteen and leave it.