I Dug One Up To See

You dug it up.

Nine days in, with nothing showing, you went out there and you put two fingers into the soil and you lifted the seed out to have a look at it.

And you knew, while your hand was moving, exactly what you were doing.

That is the part I want to start with, because it is the part you have been quietest about. This was not ignorance. Nobody has to be told that a seed does not benefit from being excavated. You did it anyway, with full knowledge, because the not knowing had got to a place where you could not sit in it any longer.

And then you looked at it, and it told you nothing. It was a seed. It looked like a seed.

So you put it back, badly, at the wrong depth, in disturbed soil, and you went inside, and now you have neither the information nor the seed.

You are able to leave the second one in the dark, and a thing you cannot see has never once been a thing that had stopped.

Let me say plainly that I am not going to tell you off about this, and there are two reasons.

The first is that this site does not do that. The second is that you have already done it to yourself, thoroughly, for several days, and a second round of it from me would add nothing except a witness.

What I want to do instead is look at what you were actually reaching for. Because it was not information about a seed.

Though it tarry, wait for it

There is a line in Habakkuk that is spoken to a man who has been asking God how long, and it is unusually blunt about time.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. (Habakkuk 2:3, King James Version)

Though it tarry, wait for it.

Now notice that the verse does not deny the tarrying. It concedes it immediately. Though it tarry. Yes, it is slow, yes, it is taking longer than you expected, that is granted and not argued with.

You are not being told that the waiting is imaginary, and Scripture has never once handled a slow thing by pretending it was fast. Habakkuk 2:3 grants the tarrying in the same breath as the instruction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an honest verse about delay land on a man standing over a disturbed patch of soil.

And then look at the phrase in the middle. An appointed time.

That is the whole answer to what you did out there. An appointed time means the timing belongs to something other than the person waiting. There is a clock, and the clock is not in your hand, and no amount of checking gets you nearer to it.

Digging it up was an attempt to get the clock into your hand.

You were reaching for a timetable that was never issued to you, and checking on a thing has never once moved the hour it was appointed for. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds the appointed time, and the written word puts the appointing somewhere entirely outside the reach of the man doing the waiting.

And there is a mercy in that which is easy to miss.

If the time is appointed, then it is not being decided by how well you handle the wait. Your patience is not a variable in it. You could wait beautifully or you could wait badly, the way you have been waiting, and the appointed time stands exactly where it stood.

You are not able to spoil an appointed time by waiting badly, and a man's restlessness has never once been consulted about when a thing arrives. The word says it will surely come, with no condition attached to the waiter, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps that promise independent of the man's performance.

What you were really reaching for

Let me get at the thing underneath, because you already half know it.

This was never about finding out something about the seed. It was about stopping a feeling.

The nine days had a particular quality to them. It was not curiosity. It was that low, grinding unease that comes when something matters and there is nothing at all to do about it, and your hands were empty and your mind kept going back to it.

And digging it up was an action. That is all it was. It was the only available action, and taking it produced about four seconds of relief before it produced a much longer stretch of something worse.

You are somebody who reached for the one available action in a situation that offered none, and an instinct to do something has never once been the same thing as a character fault. The Holy Spirit is the one who is gentle about the reason a hand moved, and Habakkuk 2:3 is spoken to a man who had been complaining to God at length rather than to a man who was calm.

I want to name that clearly, because you have been calling it stupidity.

It was not stupidity. It was a man with no move available making the only move there was. That is a completely different diagnosis and it leads somewhere completely different.

Because if it was stupidity, the answer is to be cleverer, and you cannot be cleverer at not knowing something.

You were never short of intelligence out there, and a wait with nothing to do in it has never once been solved by understanding it better. The Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man in a stretch where there is no move, and the written word answers the how long with an appointed time rather than with an explanation.

Seven days, no touching

So here is the assignment, and there are two halves, and the second half is the one that costs.

Put a second seed in.

Same pot if you like. Fresh soil if that is easier. It does not matter and I am not going to give you a method.

Then do not touch that soil for seven days.

You are able to put something in the ground for a second time, and one badly handled attempt has never once used up a man's allowance. Habakkuk 2:3 says the vision is yet for an appointed time, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man kneeling down to try a thing again.

Now, I know what the seven days are going to be like, so let me be practical about them.

You may look at the pot as often as you want. Looking is free. Go out there four times a day if that is what happens.

What you may not do is put anything into the soil. Not a finger. Not a stick. Not a careful little scrape at the edge to see if there is anything happening down there, which is the exact compromise your mind is going to offer you around day four.

You are permitted to look as much as you like and to keep your hands out of it, and standing over a pot doing nothing has never once been the same as neglecting it. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the moment where a hand stops, and the word says wait for it, which is an instruction about the hands and not about the eyes.

And water it when the surface goes dry. That is not touching, that is watering, and I am not trying to make this into a discipline with rules you can fail.

Seven days. Then it is just an ordinary pot again and the seven days are over.