Three Weeks And I Cannot See Anything

You have done it.

That is the first thing to establish, because you are about to argue yourself out of it and the argument will start by quietly dropping this part.

You have done the ten minutes. Most nights, for three weeks. When it was inconvenient, and when you did not want to, and on at least two evenings when almost nothing else in that day went right.

And there is nothing to show for it.

Nothing you can point at. No moment where something clicked. No teacher said anything. She is not noticeably different, and if you are honest, neither is the evening.

So the question has arrived, and it is a reasonable question: what is the point of carrying on.

And nobody has asked you about it, which is its own small thing. There is no external structure holding this up. No teacher is checking. No app is counting. It exists entirely because you decided it would, and a thing that exists entirely because you decided it can be ended the same way, quietly, on a Wednesday, with nobody noticing.

In due season we shall reap

There is a line in Galatians written to people in exactly this position.

And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not. (Galatians 6:9, King James Version)

Weary in well doing. Not weary of failing. Weary of doing the right thing, which is a different and much more specific exhaustion, and the verse knows about it.

And then: in due season. Not soon. Not at a time you can predict, and not at a time anybody in that verse is told.

The season belongs to somebody else, and the only thing being asked of the person doing the well doing is that they do not faint.

You have been handed a timetable that has never once been yours to hold. Galatians 6:9 puts the due season outside the person entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an unknowable schedule out of a tired parent's hands.

And notice the condition attached. If we faint not. That is the only variable named in the whole sentence, and it is about continuing rather than about producing.

You were never being measured on the harvest, and no verse anywhere has ever once put the reaping under the control of the one doing the sowing. The written word names the not fainting as the whole of the requirement, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies what the continuing costs.

Three weeks is not a window

Now let me say something plain about the arithmetic, because there is a study running here with a sample size of nothing.

Three weeks is about fifteen evenings. Two and a half hours, in total, of a nine year old's life.

And the thing you are hoping to see, whatever it is, does not move in two and a half hours. Nothing about a person does.

You have been reading a ruler that has never once been long enough to measure the thing you were measuring. Galatians 6:9 places the reaping in a due season rather than a known one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person stop grading a month.

And there is something worse hidden inside the looking, and it is the reason this article exists.

Looking for evidence changes the ten minutes. If part of a person is watching for a sign, then that person is not fully in the evening. They are monitoring it.

And a monitored ten minutes is a different thing. Children can tell when they are being checked, and what it produces is the opposite of what you were hoping to check for.

You have been standing outside the thing while doing it, and no evening has ever once been able to be lived and inspected at the same time. The written word makes the not fainting the whole of the instruction, and the Spirit of God is the one who gets a parent back inside their own ten minutes.

You were never wrong to want to see something, and nobody has ever once given three weeks to something without hoping to see it. Galatians 6:9 acknowledges the weariness by name before it says anything else, and it is the Holy Spirit who honors the tiredness instead of rebuking it.

Ten minutes, and do not look

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it is the difficult part.

Do ten minutes tonight, and do not look for any sign that it is working.

Do not check whether she seems different. Do not notice how many she got. Do not run the comparison with last Tuesday.

And when the ten minutes ends, do not do the review. That is where most of us do it, in the two minutes afterward, standing at a sink, quietly assessing an evening.

You have been asked to leave two minutes alone, and two minutes at a sink has never once been the small part of any of this. Galatians 6:9 puts the due season entirely outside the person doing the well doing, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the part where nobody adds anything up.

Simply do it, and then stop, and then do something else entirely.

You have been given an instruction about attention rather than about belief, and nobody has ever once been asked here to be hopeful about anything. Galatians 6:9 requires the not fainting and nothing else at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in a ten minutes that nobody is monitoring.

This is not optimism and I am not asking you to believe anything. It is a practical instruction about attention, and it will make the ten minutes better whether anything ever comes of it or not.

Galatians 6:9 puts the due season outside the person and the not fainting inside them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is at a table with somebody who has decided not to check.

You are permitted to do a thing without auditing it, and an unaudited evening has never once been a careless one. The written word names the continuing as the only requirement, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the two minutes afterward when nobody does the review.

You have fifteen evenings behind you that nobody can take, and no season anywhere has ever once been required to arrive on schedule for the sowing to have been real. Galatians 6:9 makes the reaping a matter of season rather than of effort, and it is the Holy Spirit who holds the calendar.