I Kept It Clear For A Week

Seven days is the number, and it is the whole of the ask.

One windowsill, or one stretch of counter, or the top of one small chest. Cleared, and kept clear, for a week.

And I already know what you will do with it, because everybody does the same thing.

You will look at it.

Not on purpose. You will be doing something else entirely and your eye will go to it, several times a day, and it will rest there for about a second and a half, and you will not be able to explain why that is pleasant.

Here is what I want to say about that second and a half, because it is the reason this is the last article on this site.

That is the only place in that house where your eye is not being asked for something. Everywhere else it lands, a small request arrives. Move me. Deal with me. Remember me.

One square foot where nothing is asked is not a decoration. It is a rest for a part of you that does not otherwise get one.

He makes me lie down and stop

There is a line in Psalm 23 that people read past because it is so familiar, and the verb in it is doing something specific.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. (Psalm 23:2, King James Version)

He maketh me to lie down. That is not permission and it is not an invitation. It is somebody else causing it to happen.

Sheep do not lie down while they are anxious or hungry or being harassed. A shepherd who gets a flock to lie down has arranged conditions in which lying down becomes possible, and the psalm gives Him the credit for that as an action He performs.

You are made to lie down by somebody who insists on it, and the lying down has never once had to be arranged by you. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman who has never given herself one clear windowsill, and Psalm 23:2 makes the resting something the shepherd causes rather than something the sheep achieves.

And notice what He supplies to make it possible.

Green pastures and still waters. Conditions. He does not tell the sheep to relax, He changes what is around them until resting is the natural thing, and the pasture and the water are the means.

You are being given conditions rather than instructions, and no instruction has ever once been able to do what a condition does. The written word has the shepherd arrange the surroundings until lying down becomes possible, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a woman whose eye has nowhere to rest in her own kitchen.

Why one square foot is enough

Let me be honest about the size, because it sounds too small to matter.

It is one square foot. It changes nothing about the house. Anybody walking in would not notice it and nobody will ever comment on it.

And it is enough, because the thing it does is not about the room.

Your eye moves around that kitchen a few hundred times a day. Every landing is a small request. One landing place with no request on it, available a few hundred times a day, is a meaningful change in the total, and the total is what tires a person.

You are changing a total that is made of hundreds of small things, and no single landing has ever once been the thing that mattered. The Holy Spirit is the one present with a woman whose eyes have been asked for something every time they land for years, and Psalm 23:2 arranges conditions rather than demanding an effort.

And here is why a week specifically.

Because the first two days it will feel like an unfinished job. It takes about four days for it to stop reading as a space that has not been dealt with and start reading as a place, and you cannot get there in a night.

You are giving it long enough to stop looking like an unfinished job, and four days has never once been too long to wait for that. The written word gives green pastures and still waters as a settled arrangement, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a woman on day two who still sees a gap rather than a place.

Seven days

So here is the whole of it.

Clear one surface, small, and put nothing on it for seven days.

That is the last instruction on this site and there is nothing after it.

You are doing something with nothing after it, and no instruction like that has ever once turned into a system. The Holy Spirit is the one who is with a woman looking at one bare windowsill, and Psalm 23:2 has the shepherd make the resting happen.

And at the end of the week, do nothing.

Do not extend it to a second surface. Do not build on it. If you want to keep it, keep it, and if it fills up on day eight, it fills up, and neither one means anything.

You are allowed to do nothing at the end of it, and nothing afterward has ever once been able to spoil the seven days. The written word makes the lying down the shepherd's own doing, and the Spirit of God is the one present with a woman on day eight with no next step at all.