I Go In With The Light Off

You reach in without turning it on.

There is a shelf just inside the door on the right and the things you actually need are on it, and your hand knows the distance exactly, and you have not switched that light on in about eighteen months.

It works. You checked, once, about a year ago, for no reason you could name.

And here is what I want to say about that, because it is more interesting than it sounds.

You are not avoiding the room. You go in it several times a month. What you are avoiding is seeing it, which is a different thing entirely, and much more precise.

That precision is worth something. It is not a general reluctance and it is not paralysis. It is one specific sense, switched off, on purpose, for a year and a half, by somebody who has worked out exactly how to keep functioning.

That is competence, not failure. It is also expensive in a way that is not obvious, and the expense is what I want to look at.

Because a room that has not been seen becomes, in your head, worse than a room that has.

The dark and the light are the same to Him

There is a verse in Psalm 139 that is usually read as comfort and is actually about visibility.

Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. (Psalm 139:12, King James Version)

The darkness hideth not from thee. The night shines as the day.

That is a statement about what a switch does and does not do. Turning a light off changes what a person can see. It changes nothing at all about what is there, and it changes nothing whatsoever about what God sees.

You are in a room that has been seen the whole time, and the dark has never once hidden it from Him. Psalm 139:12 makes the night and the day identical to His sight, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman reaching for a shelf without turning anything on.

And that cuts both ways, which is the useful part.

It means nothing in that room has been secretly getting worse in the dark, unwatched. It has been watched the whole time, by somebody who knows exactly what is in there and has not been appalled.

You have a room that has been under a kind eye for eighteen months, and nothing in it has ever once been unobserved. The written word makes darkness no barrier to sight at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman whose hand knows a distance in the dark.

What an unseen room becomes

Here is the expensive part, and it happens without anybody noticing.

A room nobody has seen in eighteen months stops being a real room. It becomes an idea of a room, and ideas are unconstrained. The real one has a fixed number of boxes in it. The idea has as many as your worst evening says it has.

So the room in your head has grown, steadily, without one single object being added.

You have been carrying an idea of a room that has grown with no objects added, and no real room has ever once done that. Psalm 139:12 keeps the actual contents fully visible regardless of the switch, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land for a woman whose room has been expanding in her head since the spring before last.

And there is a second cost, which is the entering.

Because the idea is bigger than the room, entering costs what the idea costs and not what the room costs. Every reach for that shelf is priced against the version in your head, and the version in your head is the expensive one.

You have been paying the price of an idea, and the room itself has never once cost that much. The written word keeps night and day alike to God, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman who has been overcharged for eighteen months.

Two minutes with the light on

So here is today, and there is exactly one difference from your usual trip.

Walk into the room with the light on. Stay for two minutes. Leave without moving anything.

You are able to look at it and change nothing, and looking has never once obliged you to act on what you see. Psalm 139:12 says the night shines as the day to Him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman standing in a lit room for the first time in a year and a half.

And here is what the light does, which is the whole of the article.

It replaces the idea with the room. Whatever is in there is a finite number of actual objects with actual edges, and after two minutes you will be carrying a real room instead of an unbounded one.

It might be worse than you thought. More likely it is smaller. Either way it is fixed, and a fixed thing is cheaper to carry than an unbounded one, every single time.

You are exchanging an unbounded thing for a fixed one, and a fixed thing has never once been heavier than an idea. The written word refuses to let darkness change what is actually there, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land for a woman looking at a real room with her own eyes.