I Stopped Looking Because Looking Hurt

You have not been out there in six days.

Not because you forgot. You have thought about that pot roughly every hour, and each time you have decided not to go, and each of those decisions took about a second and cost something.

Here is what happened, and I want to describe it accurately because you have been calling it giving up.

For the first stretch you went out several times a day, and every time there was nothing, and every time the nothing landed on you a little harder than the time before. Not because it was more surprising. Because hope is not free. Every time you walk out there, you have to lift it up again, and every time there is nothing, you have to set it back down.

And around day twelve you did the arithmetic without meaning to, and you worked out that the going out was costing more than it was giving.

So you stopped. And you have told yourself that this means something bad about you.

You are not far from anything, and a woman who stopped looking has never once been a woman who stopped being near to God.

Let me say plainly what that stopping actually was. It was not indifference. It was a woman protecting herself with the only tool available. And I am not going to ask you to go back to doing something that hurt.

Nigh unto them that are of a broken heart

There is a line in Psalm 34 that puts God in a specific place, and the place is not where people assume.

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. (Psalm 34:18, King James Version)

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart.

Nigh. Near. Not on the way. Not watching from somewhere. Near, already, at the point where the heart broke.

You are being told where God is standing rather than being told to go and find Him, and nearness has never once been something a person had to arrange. Psalm 34:18 states a position rather than issuing an instruction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a woman who has not been outside in six days.

And notice who He is near to.

Not the ones who kept going. Not the ones who managed their disappointment well and went out on the thirteenth day anyway. Them that are of a broken heart, which is a description of a condition and not of a performance.

You are exactly the person that verse is describing, and a heart that has stopped being able to take another look has never once been outside the reach of that sentence. The Holy Spirit is the one who is nearest at the point of most damage, and the written word locates God at the break rather than at the recovery.

And there is something else in there worth having. A contrite spirit, in that older sense, is a crushed one. Something that has been pressed down. It does not mean penitent in the way people use it now, as though the verse were only for people who have done something wrong.

So the verse is not asking what you did. It is describing where you are.

You were never being asked to account for how you got crushed, and Scripture has never once required a reason before it placed God near somebody. The Spirit of God is the one who arrives at a condition rather than at an explanation, and the word says nigh and saveth without asking a single question first.

The looking was costing what you thought

Let me be exact about the arithmetic, because the word coward has been getting used here and the arithmetic says otherwise.

Hope is a lift. It genuinely is. Every time you decided to go out and look, you had to raise something in yourself, and raising it takes effort, and the effort is real and finite.

And every time you found nothing, that thing had to come back down, and coming down is not free either. It scrapes.

Twelve days of that, several times a day, is a great many lifts and a great many scrapes, and there is a point at which any sensible person stops paying.

You were doing accurate arithmetic and calling it cowardice, and a person who stopped paying a cost has never once been a person who stopped caring. The Holy Spirit is the one who is gentle with a woman who ran out of a thing she was spending, and Psalm 34:18 puts God near to the crushed rather than near to the resilient.

And I want to say something about what would not help.

It would not help for me to tell you to go back out there and look properly and trust. That is the same transaction that emptied you, offered again with a better attitude attached.

You are not being handed the same bill with encouragement written on it, and a person out of a resource has never once been helped by being asked to spend more of it. The Spirit of God is the one who supplies rather than invoices, and the written word puts the nearness on God's side of the ledger entirely.

Stand near it without looking in

So here is the assignment, and it is built specifically to cost nothing.

Go out and stand where the pot is, and do not look into it.

That is the whole thing. Stand near it. Look at the sky, look at the fence, look at your own shoes. Do not look down into the soil.

You are able to be near a thing without inspecting it, and standing beside something has never once required a person to check on it. Psalm 34:18 says the LORD is nigh, which is a word about proximity and not about examination, and the Holy Spirit is the one out on that step with a woman looking at a fence.

The reason for this is precise. What costs you is not the yard and it is not the pot. It is the moment of looking in, because that is the moment where hope gets lifted and dropped.

Take that moment out and the rest of it costs nothing at all. You can be out there. You can be near it. You simply do not perform the transaction.

And while you are standing there, say one sentence. Anything true. I am tired of this. I would like it to come up. I do not want to look.

You are permitted to say a true sentence with nothing hopeful in it, and an honest word has never once needed to be an optimistic one to be received. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a sentence exactly as it comes, and the word places God nigh to the broken heart without asking that heart to say something brave.

Then go back inside. That is the whole exercise and it should take about a minute.