When Things Calm Down I Will Get One

When things calm down.

You have said that about the plant, and about the guitar, and about calling your brother back, and about a couple of other things that are on a list nobody has ever seen.

And it is not an excuse. That is what I want to be clear about first. Things genuinely have not calmed down. The season really has been like this, and anybody looking at the last stretch of your life would agree that it was not the moment to take on anything.

But I want to ask a plain question about it.

Which of the last several seasons was the calm one.

Because if the honest answer is none of them, then the condition you are waiting for is not a season. It is a shape of life that has not shown up yet, and a plant is being held behind a gate that may not open.

Not the spirit of fear

Paul writes to Timothy, who was young and by all appearances overwhelmed, and he is precise about what has been given.

For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind. (2 Timothy 1:7, King James Version)

Not the spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

You have been given a sound mind in the middle of a season that is not sound, and the state of your calendar has never once altered what was given. 2 Timothy 1:7 names power and love and a sound mind as already given, and the Holy Spirit is the one who says that over a man waiting for a better week.

Look at the tense. Hath not given. Has given. It is done, and it was done without reference to whether the circumstances were suitable.

Timothy was not handed those three things once his ministry settled down. He was handed them in the middle of it, which is the only place anybody ever receives anything.

And notice the third one especially, because it is the one that speaks to this. A sound mind. That is not the mind of a man whose life is calm. It is the mind of a man whose life is not calm and who has been given something steady to think with anyway.

You were given that steadiness for exactly this kind of stretch, and a hard season has never once been the reason to postpone what was already handed to you. The Spirit of God is what makes that usable rather than theoretical, and 2 Timothy 1 is where the giving is written down.

What the waiting is really about

Now the practical half, and it will be brief, because the thing itself is small.

There are two different reasons a man postpones a small good thing, and they look identical from the outside.

The first is bandwidth, and it is real. Some weeks a person genuinely cannot take on one more item, and a plant is an item.

The second is permission, and it is the one that actually runs this. Somewhere underneath is a sense that a small pleasant thing has to be earned by having your life in order first, and that taking one now, with everything the way it is, would be frivolous.

You do not owe anybody a settled life before you are allowed something small, and no season of yours has ever once been the price of admission to a windowsill. What is written in 2 Timothy 1:7 gives power and love and a sound mind without waiting for conditions, and the Holy Spirit is the one who removes an entry fee nobody ever charged.

And then there is the practical objection, which is that a plant needs attention and you have none spare.

That is worth answering honestly. A plant needs about ninety seconds a week. Less, some weeks. It is one of the very few things a person can take on that costs almost nothing in time and gives something back on a table you have to look at anyway.

Whereas the waiting costs nothing measurable and takes years.

You are able to carry ninety seconds a week through any season you have ever had, and the smallness of that has never once made it not worth doing. The Spirit of God is the one who rightsizes a thing a man has inflated, and 2 Timothy 1 is the ground under the sound mind.

Put it in the middle of the mess

Here is the instruction, and there is a detail in it that matters more than it looks.

Put it on a surface you actually use. Not on a shelf cleared for it. Not in a corner tidied first.

The reflex will be to prepare a place. Move things, wipe down, make a small clean island for the new thing, and then put it there. Do not do that, because the preparing is the same waiting in miniature and it will take a week you do not have.

Put it down among the mail and the keys and whatever else is on that surface right now.

A plant standing in the middle of an unsorted life is a true picture of where you are, and it will get watered, whereas a plant on a cleared shelf in a room you enter twice a week will not.

You are allowed to begin without tidying first, and setting something down in the middle of the mess has never once been disrespectful to it. 2 Timothy 1:7 hands over a sound mind before the circumstances cooperate, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an untidy beginning a real one.