I Nearly Did Not Go Away Because Of It

You got as far as the message.

You had it typed. Something about how the timing was not great after all, and how you might come in the spring instead, and you sat with your thumb over it for a while.

And then you sent a different message and went.

But you were close. And what you have not told anybody is what the actual reason was, because the actual reason was a plant.

Four days. Nobody in the house. One pot on a windowsill.

So let me say the thing that has been sitting underneath this, and it has very little to do with watering.

If four days away is being decided by one pot, the pot is not the size of the problem.

Come ye yourselves apart

Mark records something Jesus says to people who were genuinely busy, and it is an instruction rather than a suggestion.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. (Mark 6:31, King James Version)

Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while.

You are being told to go rather than asked whether it suits, and rest has never once been something that had to be arranged around what you are carrying. Mark 6:31 says come ye yourselves apart, and rest a while, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a woman with her thumb over a message.

Look at the conditions He says it in. Many coming and going. No leisure so much as to eat.

That is not a quiet week. That is exactly the kind of week in which a person says they cannot possibly, and He does not wait for a better one.

And the word apart is doing real work. Not rest here, in the middle of it, while keeping an eye on things. Apart. Somewhere else, with the things left behind.

You were never asked to rest without leaving anything, and going away has never once required that everything at home be covered first. The Spirit of God is what makes that an instruction rather than a luxury, and Mark 6 is where the coming apart is written down.

Four days is nothing

Now the practical half, and it is quick and complete.

A plant watered properly on the morning you leave is fine for four days. It is fine for a week. Most are fine for two.

Plants do not drink on a schedule. They drink from a reservoir, and a properly watered pot holds several days of it, and a few days of drying out at the end is closer to what they are built for than what most of them get in an ordinary week at home.

If anything, four days without you is the best four days that pot has had in a while.

You have nothing to arrange, and four days away has never once been a risk to something that was watered before you shut the door. What is written in Mark 6:31 sends people away without a contingency plan, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes an obstacle that was never actually there.

And that leaves the real question standing on its own, which is where it belongs.

Because if the plant is genuinely fine, then the near cancellation was not about the plant. It was about something a small responsibility was standing in front of, and the plant was simply the last thing in the way and therefore the one that got named.

You are allowed to notice that without solving it today, and a reason that turns out to be a cover story has never once meant you were being dishonest. The Spirit of God is the one who lifts that up carefully, and Mark 6 is the ground under the going.

Water it and go

So here is the instruction and the last part is the important one.

Water it properly the morning you leave. Properly means until it runs out of the bottom, not a splash.

Then go. Do not move it somewhere better. Do not ask a neighbor. Do not leave a note.

And tell nobody about the plant.

That last one matters because mentioning it makes it a thing, and a thing that has been mentioned has to be reported on, and then you have taken it with you in the only way that would actually spoil four days.

You are able to leave something behind entirely, and four days without mentioning a pot has never once been the same as not caring about it. Mark 6:31 says come ye yourselves apart, and rest a while, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a woman locking a door behind her.