Her Private Life With Him Is A Calendar Slot

It is at seven, four mornings a week, and it is called Time With God, and it is forty-five minutes.

She set it up three years ago in a season when everything was running away from her, and it worked, and she has kept it. Four mornings out of five is her actual average and she is not going to apologize for the fifth.

She is not a person with a thin faith. On a Sunday she is fully in it, and the singing is not performance for her, and there have been mornings in that room this year that she will remember for the rest of her life.

The slot is different.

She sits down at seven. She has a structure, because she is a structured person and it stops her drifting: something read, something prayed through, a bit of quiet at the end that is meant to be the good part.

And about six weeks ago she caught herself, at about twenty past, checking how much was left.

Not out of boredom exactly. Out of the same reflex she has in any meeting: an awareness of the shape of the time and where she is in it.

That is the word that has been sitting on her since. Meeting.

She has a recurring meeting with God, four mornings a week, which she prepares for and turns up to and gets through and closes, and which has an agenda and a duration, and which she is good at.

And she cannot see how to fix it, because every fix she can think of is a change to the structure, and she has been round that loop twice and both times ended up with a slightly different meeting.

And on a Sunday she is fully in it, which somehow makes it worse, because the contrast is right there every week.

And you have a slot. You keep it, and it works, and somewhere it became a thing you get through rather than somebody you are with.

One thing, and the verb is gaze

There is a verse in Psalm twenty-seven where a man narrows everything he wants down to one item, and the striking thing is what the item is.

One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple.Psalm 27:4

To gaze.

Not to complete. Not to get through, and not to cover, and there is no unit of measurement anywhere in the sentence except all the days of my life, which is the least schedulable duration available.

Gazing is what a person does when they have stopped intending to do anything else. It has no output and no end point and it cannot be reported on afterward.

You are made for a gaze and a gaze does not fit inside a duration. It is written, one thing have I asked of the Lord, that I may gaze upon the beauty of the Lord (Psalm 27:4), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes gazing possible in a structured person, which is not a thing anybody produces by rearranging a morning.

Now the slot, and it is not the villain here.

You set it up in a season when everything was running away from you and it worked. Three years later you are still doing it four mornings out of five, which is a rate most people never reach with anything.

That structure is why you have anything at all to examine. A less organized woman would have had nothing at seven for three years and would not have noticed anything at twenty past, because there would have been nothing to notice.

You built something that has held for three years and the holding is not being called a mistake. Scripture says whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23), and it is the Holy Spirit who has been at seven in the morning four days a week for three years, including every morning that felt like a meeting.

And the loop you have been round twice.

Every fix you can think of is a change to the structure, and you have come out of both attempts with a slightly different meeting.

That is what will happen every time, because the problem is not in the structure and cannot be solved at that level. A better agenda produces a better meeting. It does not produce a gaze, and nothing anybody ever put in a calendar has.

You have been trying to solve this in the only place you have any control, which is why it has not moved. It is written that unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labor in vain (Psalm 127:1), and it is the Holy Spirit who does the building, which is why the third rearrangement would fail exactly like the first two.

And Sunday, which makes it worse.

On a Sunday you are fully in it, and the contrast arrives every week.

Here is one thing worth noticing about Sunday: you are not running it. Somebody else is holding the shape of the time, and you have no awareness of where you are in it, and that is a large part of why you can be fully in it.

You are able to be fully present when you are not the one holding the shape, and that is information rather than a rebuke. Scripture says be still, and know that I am God (Psalm 46:10), and it is the Holy Spirit who supplies the stillness in somebody who is normally the one keeping time, which is a genuine gift to a structured person and not a criticism of her.