The Same Time Every Morning And I Call It Nothing

Twenty past six.

Not approximately. Twenty past six, most mornings, for long enough that you could not tell anybody when it started.

Kettle on. Window open if it is warm. Check the one on the left, water it if it needs it, and then the day begins.

And when your brother asked what you do in the mornings, you said nothing much.

That is the sentence I want to look at. Not the routine.

Because there is a man who has done something at the same minute every morning for years, and he describes it as nothing much, and both of those things are in the same person.

And he was not being falsely humble when he said it. That is the part worth noticing. The sentence came out before any thinking happened, which means it is not a judgment he has made about the mornings. It is a setting, and it has been set for a very long time.

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily

Paul writes to Colossae about work, and the scope of what he includes is the striking part.

And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men. (Colossians 3:23, King James Version)

Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men.

You are covered by a word that leaves nothing out, and no act of yours has ever once been too ordinary to fall inside whatsoever. Colossians 3:23 says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man at a sill at twenty past six.

Notice the two halves and which one he settles it with.

Heartily, which is about how a thing is done rather than what the thing is. And then as to the Lord, and not unto men, which relocates the audience entirely.

That second clause is why the size of a task drops out of the calculation. If it is done unto men, then scale matters, because men can only see things above a certain size. If it is done as to the Lord, the size of it was never the relevant property.

You were never working for an audience that needs a thing to be big enough to notice, and the scale of what you do at that hour has never once been the measure being applied. The Spirit of God is what relocates the audience, and Colossians 3 is where the whatsoever is written down.

What the word nothing is doing

Now the practical half, and it is about one word.

You did not say a small thing. You did not say a routine. You said nothing much, which is a word that removes something from the record entirely.

And it was not modesty. Modesty would have been calling it small. Nothing is not a smaller size. It is a different category, and the category is: this did not happen.

You have been deleting something from the account of your own life, and no act done at the same minute for years has ever once belonged in that category. What is written in Colossians 3:23 covers whatsoever, and the Holy Spirit is the one who declines to let anything be filed under nothing.

And here is why it matters beyond the plant, which is why this article is the last one in this set.

A man who calls one faithful thing nothing will call all of them nothing, because the word is not applied to the act, it is applied by a habit, and the habit does not distinguish.

So the same sentence will have been used about the forty years of turning up. About the things he did for people without mentioning them. About every steady unremarkable thing he has ever done, which is most of what a life is actually made of.

You have a habit that has been erasing the better part of your own record, and not one of the things it erased has ever once been correctly described by that word. The Spirit of God is the one who names the habit rather than the man, and Colossians 3 is the ground under the whatsoever.

Do not say the word

So here is the instruction and it is one word long.

Do it tomorrow at the same time. And when the word nothing arrives, do not say it.

You do not have to replace it. Do not reach for a better word, do not upgrade it to a routine or a practice or a discipline, because those would be a different filing of the same act and the filing is not the point.

Just do not say nothing. Out loud, or inside. If somebody asks, say what you actually do. I water the plants at twenty past six. That is a complete answer and it needs no adjective on either end.

You are able to describe a thing accurately without ranking it, and a plain account of what you do has never once been boasting. Colossians 3:23 says whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, and the Holy Spirit is the one with a man answering a question plainly for the first time in years.