I Think I Have To Do It All At Once

You have been waiting for a free weekend for two years.

Let me start there, because when it is put as a number it does something that thinking about it never does.

Two years. Somewhere around a hundred weekends. And in all of them there has not been one that was clear enough, dry enough, and long enough to do what you have decided needs doing out there.

Which tells you something, and it is not that you have been unlucky with the weather.

It tells you that the job you have designed is not a job that exists in your life.

You are not waiting for the right conditions, and a job that needs a whole weekend has never once been the only shape a job can take.

Here is what I think happened, and I do not think it was laziness at any point.

You looked at the yard at some stage, probably early on, and you sized it up properly, the way a man does. And you concluded, correctly, that doing it all would take a couple of full days.

And then a second thing happened without anybody deciding it. Doing it all became the definition of doing it. The two day version became the only version, and anything smaller stopped counting as work at all.

So now there are two categories: the full job, which never becomes possible, and nothing, which is what happens.

Not by might, nor by power

There is a line in Zechariah spoken to a man facing a job that was plainly too big for the resources available.

Then he answered and spake unto me, saying, This is the word of the LORD unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4:6, King James Version)

Not by might, nor by power.

Now, notice which two things get named there, because they are precisely the two that have been holding this up.

Might is strength. Power is capacity, resource, the means to do a thing. Between them they cover the whole of what a man means when he says he needs a free weekend and a good back and decent weather.

You are waiting on the exact two things that verse takes off the table, and might and power have never once been the pair that God said this would run on. Zechariah 4:6 names both of them and sets both aside, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a line about a temple land on a man looking at a yard.

And notice the situation. Zerubbabel had a mountain in front of him, and the next verse says so outright. This was not a small job dressed up as a big one. It was genuinely large and the resources were genuinely inadequate.

God does not respond by supplying more might. He responds by saying that is not the mechanism.

You were never going to be given the weekend, and the resources you have been waiting for have never once been what this was going to be done by. The Holy Spirit is the one named as the means in that verse, and the written word answers a mountain by changing the mechanism rather than by enlarging the man.

And there is one more thing here that is worth having. In the same chapter comes the line about the day of small things, and it is not a coincidence that the two sit together.

The alternative to might and power in that passage is not a bigger effort. It is a smaller one, done anyway, with the outcome resting somewhere else.

You are being offered a way that does not require the conditions to improve, and a small thing done in poor conditions has never once been the lesser version of the work. The Spirit of God is the one who is named as the how, and the word puts the day of small things in the very same chapter as the mountain.

Twenty minutes is not a token

Let me deal with the objection that is already forming, because I can hear it.

Twenty minutes will not make a difference out there.

That is true if the measure is the finished yard. Against two years of growth, twenty minutes is nothing, and the yard would look essentially unchanged afterward, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

You are right that it will not look different, and an honest measure of the ground has never once been the same measure as a verdict on the man standing in it. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates what a yard looks like from what a man is, and Zechariah 4:6 puts the whole outcome on the Spirit and not on the visible result.

But consider what twenty minutes does do.

It ends a two year run of nothing. It puts a man back in his own ground. It converts an abstract, enormous, undated project into a thing he did on a Tuesday, and the thing he did on a Tuesday can be done again on a Thursday.

You are able to change what kind of thing this is in one evening, and twenty minutes has never once had to move a yard in order to have moved something. Zechariah 4:6 puts the outcome on the Spirit rather than on the size of the effort, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a beginning count for more than its length.

You are able to change what kind of thing this is without changing how much of it is done, and twenty minutes has never once needed to shift a yard in order to have shifted something. The Holy Spirit is the one who works by a means other than volume, and Zechariah 4:6 puts the outcome on the Spirit rather than on the size of the effort.

And there is a practical fact about neglected ground that nobody tells you.

The first twenty minutes is worth more than any other twenty minutes you will spend out there. Because the edges, the path, the bit by the door, the small clearing that makes the whole thing navigable, all of that lives in the first session, and after it the yard stops being a wall and becomes a place with a way in.

You are holding the most valuable twenty minutes available in that ground, and the first session has never once been the token one. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a beginning count for more than its length, and the written word holds up the small day rather than the finished building.

Twenty minutes on a weekday

So here is the assignment, and both halves are chosen against the trap.

Do twenty minutes on a weekday evening and leave the rest exactly as it is.

A weekday. Not Saturday. The weekend is the thing that has been holding this, and going out on a Tuesday takes the whole apparatus out of the arrangement.

You are able to work on a day that was never designated for it, and a Tuesday evening has never once been the wrong time to put twenty minutes into a piece of ground. Zechariah 4:6 says not by might, nor by power, and the Holy Spirit is the one out there with a man in the last of the light on an ordinary evening.

And leave the rest exactly as it is. Do not tidy the tools away as though something has concluded. Do not stand at the end and survey what remains, because surveying is how the whole thing became a two day job in the first place.

Twenty minutes, put the shears down, go in.

You are stopping without taking a measurement, and walking away from unfinished ground has never once been the same as abandoning it. The Holy Spirit is the one present when a man declines to survey, and the word takes the whole outcome off might and power and puts it somewhere the man is not carrying it.

Start at the door and work outward. Not the worst part. The part nearest the way in.