It Is The First Thing I Look At

You go past the kettle.

That is the detail you noticed, and it is the detail that made you uncomfortable. The kettle is on the way and you walk past it, and you go and look at the plant, and then you come back and put the kettle on.

It started when the new growth appeared. Two weeks ago now.

And you have caught yourself doing it and thought: this is a bit much.

So the question worth asking is not whether to stop. It is what exactly you have decided is wrong with it.

Because a man who wants to see one living thing before anything else in the morning is not a man with a problem.

And the question matters more than it looks, because whatever decided that this is a bit much did not decide it this week. It has a history, and it has almost certainly been applied to larger things than a windowsill, and this is simply the first time it has shown up somewhere small enough to look straight at.

My voice shalt thou hear in the morning

David writes one line about mornings that assumes something most people never assume.

My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. (Psalm 5:3, King James Version)

In the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up.

You are made in the pattern of somebody who turns toward something first thing, and looking up before anything else has never once been an oddity in a man. Psalm 5:3 says in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man walking past his own kettle.

Notice what the verse takes for granted.

It assumes a man wakes up already oriented. That there is a direction his attention goes before he has decided anything, and that the direction is upward and outward rather than inward.

And it treats that as ordinary. There is no defense of it, no explanation, no acknowledgment that it might look excessive. It is stated the way you state a habit.

You were built with a morning that turns toward something, and that turning has never once needed a justification from anybody. The Spirit of God is what makes that more than a poetic observation, and Psalm 5 is where the direction is written down.

What you are actually embarrassed about

Now the practical half, and it is not about plants at all.

The discomfort is not that you look at a plant. It is that you want to.

Wanting is the part that has been flagged. A man is allowed to tend something, maintain it, be responsible for it. A man walking past his kettle because he is looking forward to seeing whether a leaf has opened is in a different category, and some part of you filed it under soft.

That filing happened a long time before this plant.

You are looking at a rule about wanting that was installed long before anything grew on that sill, and no plant has ever once been what triggered it. What is written in Psalm 5:3 assumes a morning that leans toward something, and the Holy Spirit is the one who exposes an old rule without embarrassing the man carrying it.

And it is worth noticing what the last two weeks have actually been like.

There has been something to look forward to, first thing, every morning, for two weeks. Small, reliable, and outside yourself.

That is not a small feature of a life. Ask anybody who has gone a while without one.

You have had something to get up toward for fourteen mornings, and the size of the thing has never once been what determines whether that matters. The Spirit of God is the one who counts that properly, and Psalm 5 is the ground under it.

Do it on purpose

So here is the instruction and it is the opposite of stopping.

Go and look at it first tomorrow. On purpose.

Not caught yourself doing it. Not sheepishly on the way past. Deliberately, as the first thing, because you want to.

And say good morning to it if you want to. That is not a joke and it is not a lapse. Men have talked to the things they keep for as long as there have been men and things, and the ones who do not are not the well ones.

Doing it on purpose changes it entirely, because the embarrassment lives in being caught rather than in the act. A thing done deliberately cannot be caught. There is nobody to catch you when you have already decided.

You are able to do it deliberately and remove the whole problem, and an act you chose out loud has never once been able to embarrass you the same way. Psalm 5:3 directs a morning toward something first, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man walking past a kettle without apologizing for it.