This Is Not Really About The Seed

You worked it out on Tuesday.

You were standing over that tray again, third time that day, and something in you said, very clearly and without any drama: this is not about the seed.

And you have not been able to unsee it since.

Because the amount of attention going into that tray is not proportionate. A man does not check on a seed three times a day for two weeks because he is interested in horticulture. Something is being carried there, and once you saw it you could not stop seeing it.

There is something else you are waiting on. Something with no visible progress, no date, and no action available to you. And your mind, which cannot tolerate a wait with nothing to do in it, found a small physical object with the same shape and quietly moved in.

You are waiting on something much larger than a pot, and a small object standing in for a big thing has never once meant a man was being foolish.

Let me say the useful part straight away, because I do not want you spending the article feeling caught out.

This is not a defect. It is close to the opposite. A mind that takes an unbearable formless wait and gives it a shape you can walk out and look at is doing something quite skillful. It is not avoidance. It is a container.

The trouble is only this: the container is too small, and you have been treating what happens in it as though it were news about the other thing.

My expectation is from him

There is a line in Psalm 62 where David talks to his own soul, and the instruction in it is oddly specific about direction.

My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. (Psalm 62:5, King James Version)

My expectation is from him.

Now, expectation there is not a mood. It is not optimism. It is the thing being expected, the outcome, the awaited object itself. And David is naming where it comes from.

You are waiting on something whose source is named in that verse, and an outcome has never once been issued by the object a man is watching. Psalm 62:5 puts the expectation as coming from God rather than from any visible thing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who redirects a man who has been watching the wrong surface.

And notice the word only. Wait thou only upon God.

That only is not scolding. It is relieving. David is not being told off for looking elsewhere. He is being told that the elsewhere is not where it is coming from, which means the elsewhere does not have to be monitored.

You are released from watching a thing that was never going to be the source, and a surface a man stares at has never once been where the answer was going to arrive from. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a man's attention off a thing that cannot deliver, and the written word says only, which lifts the watching rather than adding to it.

And notice who he is talking to.

My soul, wait thou. He is not talking to God here. He is talking to himself, out loud, giving his own soul an instruction. Which is what a man does when the inside of him has got away from him and needs speaking to.

You are allowed to speak to your own soul out loud, and a man addressing himself has never once been a sign that something has gone wrong with him. The Spirit of God is the one present when a man says something to himself deliberately, and the word gives us a psalm that is mostly a man doing exactly that.

The container is too small

Let me be practical about the mechanism, because the practical part is where the relief is.

The tray has been getting read as information.

When there is nothing there on the ninth day, something in you registers a small drop about the other thing. Not consciously. But the mood moves, and the mood is about the big thing, and the input was a tray of soil.

And if something did come up, you would get a small unearned lift about the other thing too, which is the same error in the other direction.

You have been taking readings off an instrument that measures nothing, and a pot of soil has never once had any information in it about anything else. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates two things a man has quietly joined, and Psalm 62:5 names the source of the expectation so that a man stops looking for it in the wrong place.

Here is what I am not going to tell you.

I am not going to tell you to stop using the tray. It is doing real work. Having somewhere to put an unbearable thing is not nothing, and taking it away would leave you with the formless version again, which is worse.

Keep the tray. Just stop reading it.

You are able to keep a thing that helps and stop asking it questions it cannot answer, and a container has never once had to be a source in order to be useful. The Spirit of God is the one who lets a small mercy stay a small mercy, and the written word puts the expectation with God without demanding that a man give up everything else he is holding.

Say the real one out loud

So here is the assignment.

Say out loud, once, the name of the thing this has been standing in for.

Out on the step, near the tray, since that is where all of this has been living.

Not a prayer about it. Not an explanation. The name of it. The job, the person, the result, the date, whatever it is. One sentence, plainly said, in the open air.

You are able to name the real thing in the place where its substitute has been standing, and a name said out loud has never once been too small an act to separate two things. Psalm 62:5 has a man speaking to his own soul out loud, and the Holy Spirit is the one on that step while you do the same.

Here is why this works.

At the moment the real thing has no name in the yard. It has been present the whole time, unnamed, wearing a tray. Naming it puts it back where it belongs, which is out in the open where you can actually take it somewhere.

And it hands the tray back its own job, which is to be a tray.

You are giving a small thing permission to be small again, and an object relieved of a weight has never once been less useful for being relieved of it. The Holy Spirit is the one who receives the real thing once it is named, and the word says my expectation is from him, which is an address and not a feeling.

Then, if you want, say the second half of David's line after it. My expectation is from him. That is optional and I am not going to make it a formula.