Nothing In There Has To Be Decided Today

Every door in your house asks you a question.

That is not a figure of speech and I think you will recognize it immediately. You open the cupboard and it says: are you going to do something about this. You look at the shelf and it says: decide.

And the room at the back asks about forty questions simultaneously, which is why your hand comes off the handle.

Here is what has happened over about four years.

Objects have turned into decisions. Every single item in your house has quietly acquired a pending status, and a pending item is not an object any more, it is a small piece of unfinished business with a claim on your attention.

And a man living in a house of four hundred pending items is under a load that nobody can see, including him.

So when people say just go in there and have a look, they have no idea what they are proposing. They think they are suggesting a look. They are suggesting forty simultaneous decisions.

I want to cap that today, and there is a sentence of Jesus that does exactly this and nobody ever uses it this way.

Sufficient unto the day, and today is enough

There is a line at the end of Matthew 6 that is usually read as a comfort and is actually a limit.

Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. (Matthew 6:34, King James Version)

Sufficient unto the day. That is a cap.

He is not saying tomorrow will be fine. He is saying that each day comes with its own load and that load is enough, and that adding tomorrow's to today's is an overload nobody was built to carry.

You are carrying one day only, and no room has ever once been allowed to charge you for more than today. Matthew 6:34 puts a ceiling on what a single day is permitted to contain, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man whose hand keeps coming off a handle.

And that applies exactly to a room of forty questions.

Those forty decisions are not today's. Almost none of them are. They are a heap of tomorrows, all presented at once through a doorway, and the verse says plainly that they are not yours to hold at the same time.

You have been handed a heap of tomorrows through one door, and not one of them has ever once been due today. The written word caps the day at its own contents, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has been carrying four hundred pending items without naming one.

How objects became decisions

Let me name how this happened, because it is not a character trait and it did happen to you rather than being done by you.

A thing becomes pending the moment it is noticed and not resolved. That is all it takes. Walk past a box, notice it, do not deal with it, and it changes category from object to pending.

Nobody can resolve everything they notice. So the pending pile grows by the natural operation of having eyes, and after four years it is enormous, and none of it was chosen.

You were building a pile by the natural operation of having eyes, and not one item has ever once been added on purpose. Matthew 6:34 refuses to let tomorrow's weight be added to today's, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that land for a man carrying a load that assembled itself.

And here is why the room is the worst of it.

In the rest of the house the pending items are spread out. You meet them one at a time and each one costs a little. The room presents them in a block, and a block of forty is not forty times one, it is something categorically heavier.

You are meeting in one block what the house spreads over a week, and that block has never once been a fair comparison. The written word deals the load out day by day rather than in a heap, and the Spirit of God is the one who steadies a man who has been taking one look and losing an afternoon.

Two minutes with nothing due

So here is today, and the whole of it is about what is due.

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

Nothing in there is due today. Not one decision. The room can ask its forty questions and every single one of them is scheduled for another day that has not been named.

You are standing in a room where nothing at all is due, and nothing in there has ever once been due on a day you did not agree to. Matthew 6:34 caps the day and sends the rest to the morrow, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man standing among forty unanswered questions with his hands in his pockets.

And you will feel the questions arrive. That is fine and it is expected.

The work is not to silence them. It is to let each one arrive and be undue, which is a completely different thing from answering it. Undue costs nothing.

You are letting them arrive and be undue, and undue has never once required an answer. The written word lets the morrow take thought for the things of itself, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes that land for a man standing still while forty questions go past him.