Two Hours Of Light And That Is All

The sun comes round the corner of the building at about eleven and it is gone by one.

You have timed it. More than once, because the first time you did not quite believe it, and the second time you wanted to know whether it was the same in different months.

Two hours. That is the whole of what that balcony gets.

And everything you have read says six. Full sun means six or more. Partial shade means four. And there is usually a line at the bottom about how below that, most things will struggle.

So you have concluded, reasonably, that your balcony is disqualified.

You are not short of light, and two hours has never once been measured against anything except somebody else's conditions.

Let me say what is actually wrong with those numbers, because they are not lies and they are not written for you either.

They describe what a plant needs to perform. To fruit heavily, to flower profusely, to grow at the rate a supplier needs in order to sell it as a success. They are performance figures.

And you did not come here to make a plant perform. You came because you would like something living on that balcony.

Those are different projects with different requirements, and you have been holding your two hours up against a standard set for the other one.

The light shineth in darkness

There is a line at the start of John's gospel that says something specific about how light behaves.

And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1:5, King James Version)

The light shineth in darkness.

Now, notice what that sentence does not do. It does not weigh the light against the darkness. There is no comparison of quantities anywhere in it. It does not say the light was greater, or that there was more of it, or that it eventually outnumbered the dark.

It says the light shines. That is the whole claim, and it is made without reference to how much of it there was.

You are looking at a verse that never once weighed the light it was describing, and Scripture has never measured a light against the dark it was standing in. John 1:5 makes its claim without any quantity in it at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land on a man who has been timing the sun on a balcony.

And the second half is the sturdy part. The darkness comprehended it not.

That old word carries the sense of overcoming as well as understanding. The darkness did not take it in and the darkness did not put it out. The light was not extinguished by being surrounded by more of the other thing.

You are not in a place where the shade has any power to cancel what light does arrive, and two hours has never once been put out by the twenty two around it. The Holy Spirit is the one who keeps a small light doing what light does, and the written word says the darkness comprehended it not, which is a statement about failure to overcome.

And there is one more thing that is worth having.

The verse describes light arriving in a place that is characterized as dark. It does not describe light arriving somewhere already bright, which would be no news at all. The whole point is that it is going where there is not much of it.

You are standing in exactly the setting that sentence was written about, and a dark place has never once been the wrong address for light to arrive at. The Spirit of God is the one who is described as shining into the dark rather than into the daylight, and the word puts the light in the darkness on purpose.

Two hours is a real amount

Let me be practical about the arithmetic, because the number is doing something in your head that it does not do in reality.

Two hours of direct sun is not nothing. It is two hours of direct sun.

There are things that will do perfectly well on that. Not everything, and I am not going to pretend that a tomato will be happy on your balcony. But a great many things that people grow are woodland plants by ancestry and spent their entire evolutionary history under trees, and full sun is not what they were built for at all.

You have a real quantity of a real thing, and two hours of sun has never once been the same as no sun. The Holy Spirit is the one who deals in what a man actually has, and John 1:5 says the light shineth without ever asking how much of it there was.

And here is something about your particular two hours that is worth knowing.

Late morning sun, which is what comes round that corner at eleven, is more use than most people assume. It arrives after the cold of the night has gone and before the worst heat of the afternoon, and on a balcony that means the pots are not being baked, which is the thing that actually kills more balcony plants than shade ever has.

Your two hours are gentler hours. That is not a consolation, it is a fact about the light.

You are receiving a kind of light that has never once been the second best kind, and a gentle two hours has never been a lesser thing than a harsh six. The Spirit of God is the one who gives what is suited rather than what is impressive, and the written word makes no ranking of light anywhere in that verse.

Put it where the two hours land

So here is the assignment, and both parts matter.

Put one growing thing where the two hours land, and do not move it again.

Go out at noon, when the sun is on the balcony, and see exactly where it falls. It will be a patch, probably narrow, probably along one part of the rail. Put the pot in the middle of that patch.

You are able to put something exactly where the light actually is, and a narrow patch of sun has never once been too small a place to set a pot down in. John 1:5 puts the light into the dark place without measuring it, and the Holy Spirit is the one out on that balcony with a man at noon.

And then do not move it. That is the half that will be hard.

Because in three weeks you will start wondering whether it would do better a foot to the left, and you will move it, and then you will wonder about the other end, and a plant that gets moved every two weeks never settles into anything.

The two hours are where they are. Put the pot in them and leave the pot alone.

You are able to make one decision about a position and let it stand, and a pot left where it was put has never once been a pot being neglected. The Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a man who wants to keep adjusting, and the word describes light doing its work without anybody managing it.

And do not read anything else about light requirements. Not this month. You have the number, you know where it lands, and further reading will only produce a fresh reason to think the balcony is disqualified.