Glad For About An Hour

You were delighted on Tuesday afternoon and by Tuesday evening it was gone, and you are the one who took it.

It was properly good. You knew it while you were finishing it, and you stood back and you were plainly pleased, and you told one person, and you were glad for about an hour.

Then somewhere around five o'clock you started to take it down. Not dramatically. You thought about the thing that was not quite right, and then about how anybody could have done it, and then about how it is not really anything compared to what other people do, and by the time you were making tea it had all been put away.

One hour. And nobody else did any of that. There was nobody in the room.

I am not going to tell you to be more positive, and I am not going to turn this into a lesson about humility, which would take the one good thing straight back. I am going to show you a verse where gladness is described as something structural.

The joy of the LORD is your strength

There is a sentence in Nehemiah said to a crowd who are weeping, and the word it uses for joy is not about mood.

They have just heard the law read out and they are in pieces, and they are told something that sounds almost like an instruction to cheer up, and is not.

Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared: for this day is holy unto our Lord: neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength. (Nehemiah 8:10, King James Version)

You are held up by gladness rather than by seriousness, and it has never once been a luxury. Nehemiah 8:10 calls the joy of the Lord strength and sends a weeping crowd home to eat something good, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen table with a finished piece sitting on it.

Read what they are told to do. Go and eat well. Drink something sweet. Send some to whoever has nothing. That is the instruction, and it is physical, and there is not one word in it about working harder.

And then the reason, which is the load bearing part. The joy of the Lord is your strength. Not a reward for strength. The thing that strength is made of.

You have gladness that is structural, and taking it down has never once made you more serious about the work. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an instruction given to a weeping crowd reach a woman taking her own hour back off herself, and Nehemiah 8:10 names the joy as the strength rather than as the reward.

Who took the hour

Let me say exactly what happened at five o'clock, because it matters that you know who did it.

Nobody criticized you. Nobody said anything. You ran through three arguments in your own head, in order, and the three arguments are always the same ones, and they arrive in the same sequence every single time something goes well.

You were the only person in that room, and nothing has ever once arrived from outside to take the hour. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman whose hand it was, and the written word calls the joy of the Lord strength in Nehemiah 8:10.

And here is what it costs, and it is not a feeling. If gladness is strength, and Scripture says it is, then you have been dismantling the thing that holds you up, on purpose, every time it appears. And then you wonder why you are tired in November.

That is not a scolding. It is arithmetic.

You are able to leave it standing, and leaving it has never once been pride. His Spirit is the one who stops a woman's hand on the way to taking something down, and Nehemiah 8:10 puts eating well and being glad in the same breath as strength.

Let it stand

So here is the exercise, and it is about not doing something.

Let the gladness stand for the rest of today. That is all. You do not have to increase it or announce it or write about it. Leave it where it is until you go to bed.

You are able to let one hour stand, and letting it has never once been self congratulation. Nehemiah 8:10 sends a crowd away to eat well because the joy is their strength, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one standing afternoon possible for a woman who has taken every hour back for years.

The three arguments will arrive. Probably at about five, because that is when they come. When the first one starts, say out loud that it was good, and then go and do something with your hands, because an argument in your head needs your head to be free.

And eat something nice this evening. I am not being whimsical. It is in the verse, and it is there because gladness lives in a body and not only in a head.

You were never going to be made vain by one standing afternoon, and it has never once happened to anybody. The Spirit of God carries a woman past a reflex that arrives at five o'clock, and the written word makes the joy of the Lord the strength of the people in Nehemiah 8:10.