I Do Not Have Time And I Have Ten Minutes

You do not have time. That is true and I am not going to argue with it.

You get up before anybody, you are out by twenty past eight, you are back at six and then the second half of the day starts, and the part of the evening that is actually yours begins at about half past nine and is spent by twenty to ten. That is not a complaint, it is a schedule, and it has been that schedule for years.

So when somebody says find the time, the honest answer is that there is none to find.

And here is what I want to put beside that, carefully, because it is not a contradiction of it.

Between the kettle going on and the first person coming downstairs, there are about ten minutes. Every day. Same ten. You are usually standing at the counter and the house is quiet and nothing is asked of you, and that has been happening every morning for years and it has never once been counted as time.

Not because you are careless with it. Because it does not look like time. It is not a block and it is not free and it is not a gap in the schedule. It is the inside of a job you are already doing.

I want to say the true thing before anything useful.

You are not wrong about your life and you have been describing it with the wrong unit, and that is not a failure of attention.

We are taught to think of time as blocks. Hours. Evenings. Slots you could put something into. And a life like yours genuinely has none of those, so the honest answer to how much time do you have is none, and the honest answer is also missing about seventy minutes a week.

So I am not going to tell you to get up earlier. You already get up before everybody and that suggestion is the reason most people stop reading.

Redeeming the time

There is a phrase in Ephesians that sounds like a scolding and turns out to be something else.

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. (Ephesians 5:16, King James Version)

Redeeming.

Now redeem is a very specific word and it is worth being exact, because the whole thing turns on it. To redeem is to buy back something that already belongs to you and is currently held somewhere else. It is not a word about efficiency and it is not a word about squeezing.

You cannot redeem a thing you never had.

You have time already belonging to you that is being held somewhere you have not looked, and time you did not know about has never once stopped being yours. Ephesians 5:16 says redeem rather than find, and the Holy Spirit is the one standing at a counter with a woman at twenty past six in the morning.

Now read the second half of the verse, because it is the part that takes the guilt out.

Because the days are evil. That is the reason given. The instruction is not addressed to people with pleasant open lives who ought to be more disciplined. It assumes hard days and heavy pressure, and it is written to people whose time is being taken from them by circumstances rather than by laziness.

You were never the reason your days are full, and a schedule that takes the hours has never once been a report on the woman inside it. The Holy Spirit is the one who knows exactly what is on a woman between twenty past eight and six, and Ephesians 5:16 assumes the days themselves are the trouble.

And here is the third thing, which is what makes this usable at half past six in the morning.

Redeeming is not adding. It is not a command to build a new hour that does not exist. It is a command about what is already there, which means the whole instruction fits inside a life with no room in it at all.

You have never once been asked to manufacture an hour, and something already present has never once needed to be created first. Ephesians 5:16 is about buying back rather than about building, and the Spirit of God is the one with a woman who has honestly answered none for years.

The ten minutes you never counted

Here is the practical half, and it is an inventory of one window.

The kettle window. Let us look at it properly because nobody ever has.

It is about ten minutes long. It happens seven days a week, including the days that go wrong, which almost nothing else in your life does. Standing up is already happening. The hands are mostly busy and the mouth is entirely free. Nobody is talking to you and nobody needs anything for those ten minutes, and that is the rarest condition in your whole day.

That is seventy minutes a week that you have been describing as no time.

You have seventy minutes a week that never appeared in the account, and time that goes uncounted has never once stopped existing. The Spirit of God is the one with a woman standing at a counter in a quiet house, and Ephesians 5:16 speaks of buying back rather than of finding.

Now here is why that window is better than the evening block you have been wishing for.

Your mouth is free and your hands are busy, which is the exact shape ten words wants. Ten words is a mouth job. You look at a word and say it out loud six times, and that can be done while the kettle fills and the bread goes in and the lunch things come out of the cupboard.

The evening block, if it existed, would be spent by a tired woman at half past nine. The kettle window is spent by a woman who has just got up.

You have been wishing for the worse of the two windows, and the best time in your day has never once been the one at the end of it. Ephesians 5:16 assumes evil days and asks for the buying back anyway, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman before the house wakes.

And here is what to do about the guilt, said plainly, because there is some.

There is a small feeling that using the kettle window is stealing from the family. It is not. Nobody is downstairs. Nobody is waiting. The only alternative use of those ten minutes is the one they have had for years, which is standing there thinking about the day ahead, and nobody has ever been fed by that.

You are not taking anything from anybody, and ten minutes in an empty kitchen has never once been owed to somebody else. The Spirit of God is the one who moves a woman to use what is already hers, and the written word calls it redeeming, which is the word for taking back what belonged to you.

Ten at the kettle, and then put it down

So here is the assignment, and it has a place and a moment.

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

At the kettle. Tomorrow, standing, while it fills. Card or book propped against the back of the counter where it lives from now on, because a thing you have to fetch is a thing you will not do.

Ten words, out loud, in an empty kitchen where nobody can hear you.

You have a window that already happens seven days a week, and a habit hung on something that happens anyway has never once needed to be remembered. Ephesians 5:16 asks for the buying back of what is already there, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that kitchen with a woman before the house is up.

And here is the stopping instruction, which for you is about the rest of the morning.

Stop at ten and put it down before the first person comes in. Do not carry it into the day and do not think about it again.

Because the reason this will survive in a life like yours is that it ends cleanly. It takes ninety seconds of a window you already have, it costs nobody anything, and then it is finished and the day can have the whole of you. A thing that leaks into the rest of the morning will not last two weeks in a schedule like this one.

You have permission to finish it before anybody comes downstairs, and a small thing that ends cleanly has never once been a burden on a full day. The Spirit of God is the one who settles a woman before the house wakes, and Ephesians 5:16 assumes the days are hard and asks for the redeeming anyway.