I Have Been Doing This For Years Without A Name For It

You came to this site to start something.

And somewhere around the third or fourth piece you read, an uncomfortable thought arrived, which is that you have been doing this already. For a long time. Without calling it anything.

Sitting at a table while somebody works. Reading a thing out. Being in the room. Asking about a day. Going over the same bit again on a Thursday.

Years of it. And not one of those evenings has ever been counted by anybody, including you, because nobody ever told you it was a thing that could be counted.

So you have the strange experience of reading advice about a practice you have quietly maintained since your eldest was six.

And the thought is uncomfortable rather than pleasant, which is not what you would expect. It ought to be a relief to find out you are already doing the thing. Instead there is something underneath it that feels closer to loss, and it takes a while to work out what the loss actually is.

God is not unrighteous to forget your work

There is a sentence in Hebrews that is almost startling in what it rules out.

For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labour of love, which ye have shewed toward his name, in that ye have ministered to the saints, and do minister. (Hebrews 6:10, King James Version)

Not unrighteous to forget. The double negative is doing something deliberate. It is saying that forgetting would be an injustice, and that God does not commit injustices.

Which puts the remembering in the category of righteousness rather than kindness. It is not that He is nice enough to remember. It is that forgetting would be wrong.

You have work that has never once been in danger of being forgotten, and no part of that has ever depended on anybody else noticing it. Hebrews 6:10 makes the remembering a matter of righteousness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a kitchen rather than a comfort about heaven.

And notice the tense at the end. Ye have ministered, and do minister. Past and present, in one clause.

That is not a summary of a finished thing. It is a recognition of something ongoing, which is exactly what you have got and have never described that way.

You were never at the start of this, and nothing anywhere has ever once required a practice to be named before it could be counted. The written word records both the have and the do, and the Spirit of God is the one who reads a person's years back to them.

Why it never got a name

Let me say why this happened, because it is not carelessness and it is worth understanding.

Things get named when somebody names them. Work gets counted when there is a category for it.

And the small domestic faithfulness of an adult sitting with a child is one of the few genuinely large things in a life that nobody has ever built a word for. There is no title. There is no qualification. Nobody asks about it.

So it has run for years as an unlabeled process, and unlabeled processes are invisible even to the person running them.

You have been operating something nobody built a word for, and no unnamed thing has ever once been able to be seen by the person doing it. Hebrews 6:10 names the work and the labor of love explicitly, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies a category where the world never made one.

And there is something to be honest about here, which is that the lack of a name has probably cost you something.

Not the practice. The practice continued. What it cost is that on every tired evening, and on every evening when it felt pointless, there was nothing to weigh against the feeling. No record. No total. Nothing to look at.

So you have done years of a thing while repeatedly wondering whether you were doing anything at all.

You have been carrying a doubt that has never once been about the facts. The written word records the ministering in both tenses, and the Spirit of God is the one who hands a person back the years they lived through without counting.

You were never failing to start, and nobody has ever once been at the beginning of a thing they had already done for six years. Hebrews 6:10 remembers the work as a matter of justice, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an invisible record visible.

Say it out loud, and name it

So here is the assignment, and it is one sentence said out loud in your own house.

Tonight, say the thing out loud. To another adult if there is one, and to an empty room if there is not.

I have sat with him at that table most evenings for six years.

And then give it a name. Any name. The ten minutes. The table. Our bit. Whatever fits your household.

You have the right to name a thing in your own house, and a household name has never once had to be approved by anybody outside it. Hebrews 6:10 names the work and the labor of love plainly, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a family finally calls a nine year old practice something.

The out loud part matters because a thing that has only ever been thought has no weight. It cannot be set against anything. Said, it becomes an object in a room.

And the name matters because a named practice can be counted, and a counted practice can be looked at on a bad Thursday.

You have years that are already on record somewhere, and the naming has never once been what made them real. Hebrews 6:10 calls forgetting the work an injustice, and the Spirit of God is the one who has been keeping the count while nobody in that house did.

Some of you will feel that saying it is boastful. It is not. It is a description of six years of ordinary evenings, and the reason it feels boastful is that nobody has ever spoken about this out loud, which is the whole problem.

Hebrews 6:10 records the work and the labor of love and calls forgetting it unrighteous, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a kitchen with somebody saying a true sentence about their own years.

You are permitted to say what you have done, and a plain description has never once been a boast. The written word names the work explicitly and in both tenses, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a person finally says it out loud.

You have years behind you tonight, and no part of that has ever once depended on you having noticed at the time. Hebrews 6:10 puts the remembering under righteousness, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives an uncounted thing a total.