I Am Seventy One And It Is Too Late

You have started saying it is too late.

Not dramatically. You say it in the tone people use for something obvious and slightly amusing, the way you would say you are not going to take up the violin.

Somebody mentions a garden, or a seed, or what they are planting this year, and you say, oh, that is for people with time.

And everybody laughs, because it is a light remark and you deliver it lightly.

But you and I both know that a light remark can be carrying something quite heavy, and this one is.

Because underneath it there is an actual calculation. You have quietly worked out how many years might reasonably be in front of you, and you have weighed a garden against that number, and the garden came out looking like a poor investment.

You are not too late for a thing that takes three weeks, and the years in front of you have never once been the measure of whether to begin.

I want to be plain with you, because I think plainness is what you would prefer.

I am not going to tell you that you have decades. Neither of us knows that, and a woman of seventy one does not want to be handled.

What I am going to do is question the arithmetic itself, because I think the sum you are running is the wrong sum.

They shall still bring forth fruit in old age

There is a line at the end of Psalm 92 that I want to set down carefully, because of how ordinary it sounds.

Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing. (Psalm 92:13 and 14, King James Version)

They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.

Now, the word I want you to notice is still.

Still means the bringing forth did not stop. It does not say they shall bring forth fruit again, as though there had been a gap and now there is a special exception. It says still, as in continuing, as in nobody rang a bell.

You are inside a sentence that never once contemplated a stopping point, and old age has never once been described in Scripture as the place where bringing forth ends. Psalm 92:14 uses the word still rather than the word again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a small word in an old psalm land on a woman at a kitchen table.

And notice how unremarkable the verse makes it.

There is no astonishment in the line. Nobody is amazed. It is not written as an inspiring exception, the sort of thing that would get told about somebody at a church anniversary. It is stated as the normal condition of a person planted where they should be.

That is the part that ought to reach you, because the sentence you have been saying about yourself treats the ending as normal and the continuing as remarkable, and the psalm has it exactly the other way round.

You have had the ordinary and the exceptional the wrong way about, and continuing has never once been the thing that required an explanation. The Holy Spirit is the one who corrects a picture a person has been carrying quietly for years, and the written word treats fruit in old age as a matter of course.

There is one more thing in there. Fat and flourishing. That is not a description of somebody managing, or coping, or keeping going bravely. It is a description of somebody doing well.

You were never being offered a reduced version of the thing, and the psalm has never once handed old age a smaller portion than anybody else. The word says fat and flourishing without qualification, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to shrink a promise to fit somebody's own estimate of themselves.

The sum you are running is the wrong sum

Let me get at the arithmetic, because this is where the real error is.

The garden has been getting weighed against the years.

That is a sensible way to think about an orchard. An orchard is a twenty year proposition and a person does have to think about that, and there is no shame in the thinking.

You are right to weigh a long thing carefully, and good sense about an orchard has never once been the same instrument as a verdict on yourself. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman keep her judgment and drop the sentence she attached to it, and Psalm 92:14 sets no term at all on the flourishing it promises.

But nobody asked you for an orchard.

A seed in a pot of soil is a three week question. Three weeks. That is the whole of the commitment, and the thing either does something in that time or it does not, and either way the pot is still on the sill and you are still there looking at it.

You are being asked for three weeks and you have been pricing twenty years, and a small thing has never once had to be paid for at the rate of a large one. Psalm 92 speaks of flourishing without setting a term on it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who cuts a question back down to its actual size.

And there is something else the sum has left out entirely, which is the three weeks themselves.

The plant has been treated as the return. It is not. The three weeks are the return. Going to look at a pot in the morning is the return. Having something on the sill that was not there before is the return.

Those are not deferred. Those happen immediately and they happen whether or not anything comes up.

You are able to receive the whole of the good part in the next three weeks, and a small daily thing has never once required a long future to be worth having. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in an ordinary morning at a windowsill, and the written word promises flourishing in the season a person is actually standing in.

Today, and not in the spring

So here is the assignment, and the timing is the point of it.

Put one seed in soil today. The same day you read this.

Not at the weekend. Not when the weather turns. Not at the start of the proper season, and certainly not in the spring.

You are holding a decision that only ever needed this afternoon, and a proper season has never once been what a pot of soil was waiting on. Psalm 92:14 attaches no date to the bringing forth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who moves a good intention out of the future tense and into today.

I am being deliberate about this, because a woman who has decided it is too late has an excellent relationship with the future tense. Anything placed in the spring is safely far away, and by the spring the sentence about being too late will have had five more months to set.

Today. Whatever seed is in the house. Out of a packet, out of a jar of dried beans, out of a piece of fruit on the counter.

You are permitted to begin something on an ordinary Tuesday with no ceremony at all, and a right season has never once been a requirement for putting one seed in one pot. Psalm 92:14 says they shall still bring forth, with no date attached anywhere, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman filling a small pot this afternoon.

And put it where you will pass it. Not somewhere sensible. Somewhere you go.

The whole value of this is that you see it several times a day without meaning to, and each time you do, a woman who says it is too late is looking at a pot she filled on purpose.

You are contradicting a sentence about yourself every time you walk past that sill, and one small object has never once been too little to argue with a long held idea. The Holy Spirit is the one who works on a settled thought a little at a time, and the word has already said still, which is a word about continuing.