The Place Where Things Go To Not Be Decided

There is a place in your house where things go when a decision cannot be made about them.

The garage. The loft. The shed. The cupboard at the top of the stairs that has not been opened since a particular year. Every house has one and yours is doing more work than most.

And I want to say something about it that is not a criticism, because I think the thing itself is quite reasonable and only becomes a trap later.

Putting a thing there is a real act. It is not nothing. It resolves a problem in the room you are standing in, which was that an object was in the way and you did not have the resources to decide about it. Moving it out of sight solves the immediate difficulty completely.

What it does not do, and this is the whole of the trouble, is anything at all about the decision. The decision does not go into storage. The decision stays exactly where it was, which is inside you, and it stays open, and open decisions have a weight even when you cannot see the objects.

So the garage is quiet and full, and something in you is tired in a way the calendar cannot explain.

Consider your ways

There is a line in Haggai spoken to people who had built themselves houses while something else waited.

Is it time for you, O ye, to dwell in your cieled houses, and this house lie waste? Now therefore thus saith the LORD of hosts; Consider your ways. (Haggai 1:4 and 5, King James Version)

Consider your ways.

I want you to notice how mild that instruction is, given how strong the setup was. He does not say repent, in that verse. He does not say start building. He says consider. Look at the pattern. Think about where the effort has been going.

That is a request to look at a mechanism, and it is being made by somebody who could have asked for a great deal more.

You are being asked for a look tonight and nothing beyond it, and no verse anywhere has ever once opened with a demand for a cleared garage. Haggai 1:5 says consider your ways before it says another word, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes considering feel like relief instead of the first move of a long punishment.

And it comes with an observation in the previous verse, which is that the people had been putting their energy into what was in front of them while something they had genuinely intended to do sat waiting.

Nobody in that chapter is called a bad person. They are called busy. And what is asked of them, first, before anything else, is to look at it.

You are not being asked to empty that garage tonight, and Haggai 1:5 has never once opened with a demand for work. It is written that the first instruction was to consider, which puts looking before building, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes considering feel like relief rather than like the first step of a long punishment.

You have been putting things where decisions go to wait, and never once has a single one of them actually waited there. The word asks a people to look at the pattern of where their effort goes, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a mechanism without accusing the person operating it.

An open decision costs more than a full room

Here is the thing I most want to hand you, and it explains something that has probably confused you.

There is a tiredness here that does not match the life around it. A house that is technically fine to look at, because everything is out in the garage, and it still sits on the person living in it. A full garage is a record of what a hard stretch cost, and it is not a verdict on the man who filled it.

It is because a closed room full of undecided things is not silent. Every object in there is a small open loop. Do I keep it. Whose was it. What does letting it go mean. And a mind holds open loops whether or not it can see them, which is why the garage is heavier than the same objects would be if they were in a pile in the middle of the front room with a decision made about each one.

Storage does not close a loop. It only takes the loop out of your eyeline.

You were never disorganized, and what you have been doing is holding four hundred open questions in a place you cannot see them. Haggai 1:5 asks for a considering of the way things have gone, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person see a load they have been carrying without knowing its name.

So tonight is a considering, and nothing else. No deciding. I am specifically forbidding deciding.

You are permitted to look at the whole of it tonight and resolve none of it, and looking has never once put you under obligation. It is written that the first word to that people was consider and not build, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is standing in a garage full of postponed things.

Two minutes, and no decisions at all

So here is the whole of it.

Open that door, or that hatch, or that cupboard. Put a light on if there is one, or use your phone.

Stand there for two minutes and look.

Decide nothing. Move nothing. Do not open a box. If a decision arrives in your head, let it go past, because tonight is not for that.

Then close it and stop.

You are able to consider this tonight, and considering has never once required you to act on what you saw. Haggai 1:5 puts considering first and by itself, and the Spirit of God is present in two minutes of honest looking exactly as He is in a cleared garage.