I Look At Them And I Walk Past

You stop every time.

It is not a detour. They are right there by the entrance, and you slow down, and you look properly. You turn one round. You check the underside of a leaf like you know what you are looking for.

And then you go and do the rest of the shopping and you come out with everything except that.

This has happened, what, eight times. Ten.

And each time something in you was waiting for a particular feeling to arrive, a settledness, a sense of yes, this is the right week, this one, I am ready for this.

It has never arrived. And you have concluded, reasonably, that its not arriving is the answer.

It is not the answer. It is a feeling that does not come first.

Help thou mine unbelief

There is a man in Mark whose son is very ill, and what he says to Jesus is one of the most honest sentences in the book.

And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief. (Mark 9:24, King James Version)

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

You are standing in exactly the condition that man stood in, and having both of those things at once has never once disqualified anybody from acting. Mark 9:24 has belief and unbelief in the same breath from the same man, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman who has walked out ten times.

Look at what he does not do. He does not wait until the unbelief has cleared before he speaks. He does not go away and work on his faith and come back when it is tidier.

He brings the whole mixed thing forward and asks for help with the part that is missing, while the part that is present is already moving.

And Jesus does not send him away to sort himself out. The request is answered in the state it was made in.

You were never required to arrive settled, and a mixed and unfinished readiness has never once been turned away. The Spirit of God is what makes that usable in an ordinary week, and Mark 9 is where the honest sentence is written down.

The feeling comes after

Now the practical half, and it is one small correction that changes everything.

The order in this has been backwards, and it is backwards for almost everybody.

The settled feeling does not arrive and then produce the action. The action arrives and then produces the settled feeling, usually about three days later, usually while doing something unrelated.

That is not a trick or a mind game. It is how it works with almost anything small and good. Nobody feels like a person who walks in the mornings until after they have walked several mornings.

You are not missing a readiness that other people had first, and nobody in that aisle has ever once felt settled before they moved. Mark 9:24 has the father asking in the middle of his own unbelief, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman act ahead of her own feelings.

So standing in front of those plants waiting to feel ready is waiting for the second thing to happen before the first one.

You have been waiting on something that only arrives afterward, and its absence has never once been a message about whether to go ahead. What is written in Mark 9:24 brings the unfinished belief forward rather than perfecting it first, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reorders that for a woman in an aisle.

And there is a second thing, which is smaller and more practical, and it is about the choosing.

Part of what happens in those ten minutes is a selection problem. Which one, is it the right one, will this one do better than that one, and the longer that runs the more the whole thing feels like a decision with consequences.

Take the choosing out. Pick one up without evaluating it. The first one your hand goes to.

You are free to pick one without deciding anything, and reaching for the nearest has never once been carelessness about what you are bringing home. The Spirit of God is the one who shrinks a decision back to a movement, and Mark 9 is the ground under acting unfinished.

Nothing is being promised

And here is the thing I want to settle before you go, because it is what the ten minutes are really about.

Carrying one to the counter is not a promise.

Not to the plant, not to yourself, and not to anybody who sees it on your windowsill later. There is no undertaking involved. It is a living thing being picked up and brought into a house, and that is the entire transaction.

If it does not last, you will not have broken anything. There was no vow. A plant that dies in your kitchen is a plant that died in your kitchen, and that sentence is allowed to be the whole of it.

You are carrying nothing but a plant to that counter, and nothing you have ever carried home has once been a commitment somebody could hold you to. Mark 9:24 asks for help in the middle of the asking rather than after it is deserved, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a small act from swelling into an oath.