Eleven Days Of Quiet

Eleven days. You know it is eleven because you have been counting, and the counting started without you deciding to.

Nothing has come in. Not nothing at all, but nothing new, and the thing you have been waiting for is a sound. A notification. A phone lighting up on a table. And your entire day has quietly rearranged itself around that sound not happening.

You check it when you sit down. You check it when you stand up. You turned it over four times during one cup of tea this morning, and you know that because you watched yourself do it and could not stop.

And nothing is wrong. That is the part with no handle on it. No complaint, no falling out, no explanation. Eleven days of ordinary quiet, and you are worn out by something that is not even an event.

I am not going to tell you how to make the phone ring, because that would be strategy and there is none of it on this site. And I am not going to promise you that next week is different, because I have no idea. I am going to talk about waiting, and about one verse that knows exactly how it feels.

More than they that watch for the morning

There is a line in Psalm 130 about waiting, and the comparison in it is the most exact description of this I know.

The psalmist needs a word and it has not come, and he reaches for the image of men on a night watch.

My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning: I say, more than they that watch for the morning. (Psalm 130:6, King James Version)

You are in a kind of waiting that Scripture knows by name, and it has never once been weakness to be worn out by it. Psalm 130:6 reaches for men watching for daybreak and then says the line a second time because once was not enough, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with a phone lying face down on it.

Notice that he says it twice. More than they that watch for the morning. I say, more than they that watch for the morning. He repeats himself, which is what a person does when the first attempt did not carry the weight.

And notice what the watchman is doing. Nothing. He is not working toward morning and he cannot hurry it. He is awake, facing the right direction, and that is the entire job.

You have a kind of waiting that is its own work, and it has never once been idleness. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a night watch on a city wall reach a woman who has turned a phone over four times in one cup of tea, and Psalm 130:6 says the hard sentence twice without apologizing for the repetition.

What the checking is doing

Let me say what the checking actually is, because it is not hope.

It is a way of asking the question again. Each check is one more attempt to get an answer out of a silent object, and the answer is always the same, and the asking costs about forty seconds of your attention each time.

You were never going to get an answer out of it, and it has never once had one to give. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own hands keep doing, and the written word puts the waiting of a soul beside the watching for daybreak in Psalm 130:6.

And here is the real cost, which is not the forty seconds. You cannot work properly while you are listening. Every piece of work you have done in eleven days has been done by somebody half turned toward a table, and you can tell, and the quality of your own attention has become another thing to feel bad about.

The watchman on the wall is not checking whether it is morning every ninety seconds. He is facing east and doing his job.

You are able to work while you wait, and the two have never once been in competition. His Spirit is the one who gives a woman back the use of her own hands, and Psalm 130:6 has the waiting done with the face in one direction rather than with constant checking.

The drawer, and one ordinary thing

So here is the exercise, and it has two halves, and the second one is not about the phone.

Put the phone in a drawer for two hours. An actual drawer in another room. Not face down on the table, because face down on the table is still within reach.

You are able to put it out of reach for two hours, and doing it has never once meant you stopped caring. Psalm 130:6 has a soul waiting with its face in one direction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes two hours possible for a woman who has counted eleven days.

Then do one ordinary piece of the work that nobody has asked for yet. Not something clever and not something that might bring work in, because that would be strategy and that is not what this is.

The boring thing. The stock count. The thing you half made in August. The repair on the machine. Something that is simply the work, done today, for no reason except that it is the work.

You were never waiting on permission to work, and the quiet has never once taken the work away. The Spirit of God carries a woman's hands back to something ordinary, and the written word has a watchman facing the right way with nothing in his hands in Psalm 130:6.