An Hour Went And It Looks The Same

You gave it an hour.

A real hour. Not a distracted twenty minutes with a phone in your hand. An hour of moving, lifting, carrying, deciding, with your back and your knees.

And at the end of it you stood up and looked around and could not see it.

The room looked the same. And here is the part that is worse than the room looking the same. You felt worse than when you started. You began with something and you ended with less, and an hour of your life had gone into a place you cannot point at.

I want to explain what happened in that hour, because I think an accurate account will help more than any encouragement would.

You did not fail to make a difference. You made about six or seven differences, and every one of them was in a category the eye does not read. Things that went from wrong place to right place. Things that went into a bag. Space made inside a container. A pile that got shorter but is still a pile.

The eye reads outlines. It reads whether there is stuff or not stuff. It does not read organization, or category, or the fact that eleven items now have somewhere to be.

So the hour was full and the picture is unchanged, and both of those are true at the same time.

Your labor is not in vain

There is a sentence at the end of a very long chapter in Corinthians, and the chapter is about resurrection, and then it lands here.

Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye stedfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58, King James Version)

Your labor is not in vain.

Now notice what that sentence assumes about the people hearing it. Nobody says that to somebody who can see their results. You do not tell a man looking at a finished wall that his labor is not in vain. He knows. The wall is right there.

That sentence is written for people who cannot see it. It is a statement made specifically into the situation where the evidence is missing, which is exactly the situation in that room at the end of that hour.

You are inside the exact situation that promise was written for, and 1 Corinthians 15:58 has never once been addressed to somebody standing in front of visible results. The Spirit of God is the one who holds the value of work that left no mark, and the written word calls the labor not empty before anybody can see it.

And the word vain there is about emptiness. Not wasted, exactly. Empty. Coming to nothing.

So the promise is not that you will see it. The promise is that it is not empty, whether or not you can see it.

You are not looking at an empty hour, and 1 Corinthians 15:58 has never once been addressed to people who could see their own results. It is written into a situation where the evidence is missing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on somebody standing in a room that looks unchanged.

You have been reading a room instead of counting an hour, and never once has a room been able to report accurately on what was done in it. The word says the labor is not empty, and the Spirit of God is the one who holds the value of work that left no visible mark.

Count the hour instead of looking at the room

Now here is the practical thing, and it is a change of instrument.

The measuring has been done with a pair of eyes, and eyes are the wrong tool. They are excellent at outlines and hopeless at what was actually done.

So we count instead.

Sit down for two minutes and list what happened in that hour. Out loud or on paper. The bag that went out. The four things that got put where they live. The drawer that works now. The shelf with space on it. The thing that finally went in the trash after two house moves.

You will be surprised. Almost everybody is. An hour of real work usually contains between six and twelve distinct completed actions, and none of them shows.

You were never wasting an hour, and there has never once been a version of that hour that contained nothing. 1 Corinthians 15:58 speaks its promise into an absence of evidence, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person count what their eyes cannot see.

And then, having counted, go and look at the one thing you can point at. There is almost always one. The drawer. The bag by the door. The corner of the counter.

You are permitted to look at one small visible thing and let it stand for the whole hour, and letting it has never once been dishonest. It is written that the labor is not in vain, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one visible drawer hold the weight of an hour a room refuses to report.

Go and look at the one thing

So here is the whole of it.

Two minutes, listing what that hour contained. Six or seven things at least.

Then go and look at the one part of it you can actually see.

Then stop. Do not clean anything tonight. Do not do another hour to make the first one show.

You are able to count an hour honestly tonight, and counting it has never once required the room to agree with you. 1 Corinthians 15:58 puts the promise where the evidence is not, and the Spirit of God is present in a list of seven small finished things.