The Part With No Reward In It

Three hours and the room looks the same.

You know it is not the same. You know exactly what got done, and if somebody asked you could list it, and every item on that list was necessary and none of it can be seen.

And the thing that happens at the end of an evening like that is not tiredness. It is something flatter. You stand in the doorway looking at a room that looks identical to the room you walked into, and something in you quietly files the evening as a loss.

That filing is the problem, and it happens faster than thinking, and it has happened a number of times now.

And after three or four evenings filed that way, a man stops offering evenings. Not deliberately. He simply stops finding himself in there, because some part of him has learned that this particular kind of work returns nothing.

The work did not return nothing. The work returned exactly what it was supposed to return. What returned nothing was the looking at the room afterward, because the looking is the wrong instrument for measuring this stage.

You are a man doing work that does not report itself, and an evening with nothing to show has never once been an evening with nothing in it.

Your labor is not in vain

There is a line at the end of the long chapter about resurrection, and the last clause of it is an accounting statement.

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.

Vain there means empty. Coming to nothing. Producing no result. And the sentence is not an encouragement in the soft sense, it is a statement about where the work is recorded.

And notice it does not say the labor will be seen. It does not say it will be recognized, or that anybody will notice, or that the room will look different afterward.

You have an accounting that does not depend on anything being visible, and work that cannot be seen has never once been work that came to nothing. First Corinthians 15:58 says not in vain rather than saying it will show, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps that a plain statement rather than a consolation.

And look at the phrase before it. Forasmuch as ye know.

Ye know. It is treated as information a person is expected to hold, rather than as a feeling they are expected to have. That distinction matters enormously on a Tuesday night in a doorway.

You were given something to know rather than something to feel, and knowing a thing has never once required the room to cooperate with it. The Spirit of God is the one who holds a fact steady in a man when the evidence in front of him says otherwise, and the written word says ye know and puts it in the indicative.

The looking is the wrong instrument

So here is the practical claim, and it is about measurement.

Standing in the doorway and looking is an excellent way to measure the stages that produce visible change. It is a completely useless way to measure the stages that do not.

And this stage does not. The preparation, the stripping back, the second coat that looks like the first coat, the clearing of the space where the new thing goes. All of it is necessary and none of it photographs.

You have been using the wrong instrument on the wrong stage, and an eye has never once been able to measure a thing that does not change appearance. First Corinthians 15:58 records the labor rather than displaying it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies a different instrument for a different stage.

And here is what the wrong instrument costs, which is the reason this is worth an article.

Every evening measured that way comes back as a loss, and a run of losses teaches a man not to spend evenings that way. So the man stops, and the stage never gets done, and the stage is the one that has to be done before anything visible can happen at all.

You were never being taught anything true by those evenings, and a false reading repeated four times has never once become a fact. The Spirit of God is the one who corrects the instrument, and the written word states the case in the indicative and leaves no room for the room to overrule it.

And there is a better instrument available and it takes eleven seconds.

You have a sentence available at the end of tonight that measures what the eye cannot, and one written line has never once been too small a thing to overrule a doorway. First Corinthians 15:58 says ye know, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a plain written record stand up against an unchanged room.

One hour, and one sentence afterward

Here is the assignment and the second half is the part that does the work.

Do one hour of the unrewarding part.

Whatever it is. The stripping, the clearing, the sanding, the coat that looks the same as the coat beneath it. One hour, and it will look like nothing at the end and you already know that.

You have one hour of invisible work available tonight, and an hour that leaves no mark has never once been an hour that did not count. First Corinthians 15:58 says not in vain, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there with a man doing the part nobody will ever see.

Then, before you come inside, write one sentence saying what actually got done.

On your phone, on a scrap, on the back of something. Stripped the whole of the long wall. Cleared the corner and took the old fixings out. Second coat on the ceiling.

That sentence is the instrument. It measures the thing the eye cannot, and it is there tomorrow when the room looks the same and something in you starts filing the evening as a loss.

Then read it. That is the whole of it. A written line is a stubborn thing and it will hold against a doorway.