I Am Waiting For The Right Conditions

The room was never quiet enough.

That is the honest account of the last four months, and you would not put it that way yourself, because the way you put it is that things have been busy. Which is also true. But the shape underneath it is that there are conditions, and the conditions have not arrived.

You know what they are. You could list them.

A clear hour, or most of one. A desk with nothing else on it. Nobody about to knock. Enough left in your head to actually take something in rather than move your eyes across a page.

All four. At once. And at some point that stopped being a preference and became a gate, and the gate has been shut since about March.

Here is the part that stings, and I suspect you already know it.

The conditions are not unreasonable. Every one of them genuinely would help. That is exactly what makes this so hard to argue with from the inside, because you are not being lazy and you are not making excuses, and anybody who accused you of either would be wrong.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You have been waiting for something that is not coming, and it is not your fault that you were taught to wait for it.

Somewhere along the way most of us learned that study is a serious activity requiring a serious setting. Desk. Quiet. Time. That picture was handed to you at school and nobody has updated it since, and it fits a life that almost nobody over thirty actually has.

So I am not going to tell you to make time. You have heard that, and the time is genuinely not there to be made, and being told otherwise by somebody with a different life is the reason you closed the last article.

Let me agree with you first.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow

There is a line in Ecclesiastes about a farmer standing in a field doing arithmetic.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. (Ecclesiastes 11:4, King James Version)

Watching the wind. Reading the clouds.

Notice what the man in that verse is doing wrong, because it is not laziness and the verse never accuses him of it. He is assessing conditions. He is being careful and sensible, and he is checking whether this is a good day for it before he commits seed to the ground.

You have been doing something the written word describes exactly, and checking the conditions has never once been the same as making excuses. Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the problem in the observing rather than in the man, and the Holy Spirit is the one sitting with somebody who has not opened it since March.

Now here is what the verse actually says happens to him.

He does not sow. That is all. Not he sows badly, not he sows late. He does not sow at all, because there is always some wind, and the assessment never finishes, and the season goes by while the arithmetic keeps being done.

And the second half is worse. He that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. The reaping fails too, which is the harvest of a thing he never planted, and it fails for the same reason.

You were never going to run out of reasons, and a reason that is genuinely true has never once been different from a reason that stops you. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a careful man in a field, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 says the sowing simply does not happen rather than happening badly.

And here is the third thing, which is the instruction that follows two verses later.

In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand: for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that. (Ecclesiastes 11:6, King James Version)

Morning and evening. Two scattered handfuls, at two unremarkable moments, with no claim about which one works.

You have been offered a smaller instruction than the one you were holding, and two handfuls has never once been a lesser thing than a season's plan. Ecclesiastes 11:6 asks for the morning and the evening rather than the right day, and the Spirit of God is the one with a man who has been waiting for four conditions to line up.

Ten words does not need a room

Here is the practical half, and it is about what ten words actually requires.

Nothing on your list.

Say it slowly. Ten words does not need a clear hour, because it takes about ninety seconds. It does not need a clean desk, because it needs no desk. It does not need quiet, because you can do it in a room with a television on. And it does not need a fresh head, because meeting a word for the first time is almost entirely a matter of looking at it and saying it out loud.

Every single gate you built was designed for a different activity.

You have been guarding a door that this particular thing does not come through. The Spirit of God is the one with a man whose gates were built for something else entirely, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 shows a careful assessment producing nothing at all in a whole season.

Now here is the thing about the ninety seconds that is worth understanding, because it is the actual mechanism.

A word met once for a long time is a word you know for about four days. A word met briefly on six separate occasions stays put for years. That is simply how the thing works, and it means the scattered handfuls are not the compromise version of the proper hour. They are the better method.

The hour you have been waiting for would have been worth less than the four months of ninety seconds you did not do.

You were never choosing between a good method and a poor one, and the small scattered version has never once been the lesser of the two. Ecclesiastes 11:6 asks for morning and evening without knowing which will prosper, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a careful man to scatter a handful on a bad day.

And here is the piece the gate was really protecting, said plainly.

A proper hour can be done well. Ninety seconds cannot be done well or badly, it can only be done. There is no performance available in ten words, and so there is nothing to be good at, and a man who likes doing things properly finds that oddly hard to start.

You are being asked for something with no quality in it at all, and a thing that cannot be done well has never once been beneath anybody. The Spirit of God is the one with a man who would rather do it properly, and the written word tells a farmer to scatter without knowing which handful takes.

Ten today, and then close it

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it matters as much as the first.

Learn ten words today, then close the book and do not add more.

Ten. Not a page. Not until you feel finished. Open it wherever it opens, take ten, say each one out loud once, and then shut it.

And the stopping is an instruction rather than a permission. If it goes well and you feel like doing thirty, stop at ten anyway, because the whole point is to prove that this fits inside a bad day, and thirty proves nothing except that today was a good day.

You have ninety seconds somewhere in today already, and ten words has never once needed the conditions to be right first. Ecclesiastes 11:4 shows the assessing producing nothing across a whole season, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man opening it standing up with his coat on.

And here is where to put it, because the where is what makes it survive.

Not at a desk. Somewhere that already exists in your day and already happens. Standing at the counter while something heats. Sitting in the vehicle before you go in. In the four minutes before anybody else is up.

Attach it to something you already do without deciding, and it will happen on the days you have decided nothing at all. Then stop, because ten is the assignment and the day owes you nothing further.

You have permission to close it after ten, and stopping on purpose has never once been the same as giving up. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a man after ninety seconds of it, and Ecclesiastes 11:6 asks for a morning handful without asking for the afternoon as well.