It Has Been Too Long To Pick Up

It is the number that stops you.

Not the work. The work is the same work it always was, and you know how to do it, and your hands remember more than you give them credit for.

It is the nine years. Or seven, or twelve, whatever the figure is in your house. Somewhere along the way the length of time became the thing, and now the number stands in front of the job like a rule.

And the rule says something like this: after that long, a person does not just pick it up. After that long, there would have to be an occasion. A reason. Some sort of ceremony to mark the fact that this is finally being addressed.

Which means the job now requires an event, and events are hard to arrange, and so the thing that was a job is now a production that has never been scheduled.

Nobody made that rule. It assembled itself out of the passing of time, quietly, without anybody voting on it.

You are a woman standing in front of her own work, and a gap of nine years has never once been a rule about who is allowed to pick something up.

The years that the locust hath eaten

There is a promise in Joel about time, and it is worth being careful with it, because it is not a promise about a room.

And I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the cankerworm, and the caterpiller, and the palmerworm, my great army which I sent among you. (Joel 2:25, King James Version)

The years that the locust hath eaten.

It is a promise about years, and it is made to a people, and I am not going to tell you it means a finished sewing corner, because that would be dishonest and this site does not do that.

What it does establish is something about how God regards elapsed time, and that is the part worth taking, because it is the exact thing standing in your way.

You have a God who speaks about eaten years as a thing to be dealt with rather than as a verdict, and the passing of time has never once been treated in that book as a disqualification. Joel 2:25 speaks about years directly and restores them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that from becoming a promise about your house.

And look at the word restore. It is a word about returning something to a person, which means the years are being treated as something that belonged to her and was taken.

Not as something she wasted. Not as something charged against her. The whole grammar of that sentence has the years being done to a people rather than by them.

You were never being billed for those years, and time that went has never once been recorded against you as a debt. The Spirit of God is the one who puts the years on the side of the loss rather than on the side of the charge, and Joel 2:25 uses the word restore, which is only ever said about something owed back.

The number is not a rule

So here is the practical claim, and it is a small piece of clear thinking.

The nine years are a fact and not a rule. They describe what happened. They do not contain an instruction about what happens next.

At no point did anybody say that after nine years a thing must be approached in some special way. That was added later, by nobody, and it has been enforced ever since.

You have been obeying a rule that nobody ever issued, and elapsed time has never once carried an instruction inside it. Joel 2:25 speaks about years as something to be restored rather than as something that sets terms, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a rule off a woman that nobody put on her.

And here is what the rule actually costs, which is more than it looks.

Requiring an occasion makes the job bigger than it is. A small piece of work becomes a resumption, and a resumption becomes a significant day, and significant days need energy and good health and a clear head and all of it lining up at once.

So a twenty minute job now needs a good day, and good days are scarce, and the whole thing waits on scarcity that a twenty minute job never needed.

You have a twenty minute job dressed up as a significant day, and a small piece of work has never once required a good day to be done on. The Spirit of God is the one who takes the occasion off a task, and the written word restores years without staging anything at all.

And one more thing, and it is where the relief sits for a woman who has been carrying this. Picking it up quietly is not a small gesture. It is the whole of what was ever needed.

You have permission to do this without marking it, and an ordinary Tuesday has never once been an unworthy day to start on. Joel 2:25 restores years without a ceremony anywhere in it, and the Holy Spirit is the one present in a completely unremarkable afternoon.

An ordinary weekday, and no ceremony

Here is the assignment and the second half is the instruction.

Do one small piece of the work on an ordinary weekday.

Not Saturday. Not the first of the month. Not a day you have set aside. A Tuesday, in the afternoon, between two other things, the way you would do any small job.

You have an ordinary weekday coming and one small piece of work available in it, and a plain afternoon has never once been too little for something that waited nine years. Joel 2:25 restores the years without an occasion attached, and the Holy Spirit is the one in that room on a day nobody will remember.

Then here is the important half. Do not mark it in any way.

Do not tell anybody about it. Do not photograph it. Do not write the date down. Do not decide that this is the beginning of something, because deciding that is how it becomes an occasion again, and occasions are what have kept this waiting.

Do twenty minutes. Put it down. Have your tea. Let the day be a completely ordinary day.

The nine years do not need to be honored or explained or accounted for. They happened. And a Tuesday afternoon is exactly as good a day as any other for a woman to pick up her own work.