I Found The Flaw In Four Seconds

You finished it, you held it up, and within about four seconds you had found the thing that is wrong with it.

The seam at the back. The place where the grain runs the wrong way. The eighth of an inch. Whatever it is, you found it immediately, and after that you could not see anything else, and you have not really looked at the whole thing since.

And the person who collected it said it was lovely, and you said thank you, and then you said the bit about the seam, because you could not help it.

This is not modesty and I am not going to treat it as a spiritual problem. It is a habit of the eye, thirty years old, and you can find the fault in anything, including things other people made, and it is the same four seconds every time.

I am not going to tell you to stop being a perfectionist. Your standards are the reason the work is good. I am going to ask you to do one thing with your eyes, and I am going to show you a verse where somebody looks at finished work.

And Moses did look upon all the work

There is a sentence at the very end of Exodus, after chapters of instructions and measurements, and it is about an inspection.

The tabernacle is finished. Everything has been made. And then there is this.

And Moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the LORD had commanded, even so had they done it: and Moses blessed them. (Exodus 39:43, King James Version)

You are allowed to look at the whole of a finished thing, and it has never once been vanity to do it. Exodus 39:43 has a man look at all the work and bless the people who made it rather than inspect it for faults, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a kitchen window with something being held up to the light.

Look at what he looks at. All the work. Not a seam, not a joint, not the one panel he was worried about. All of it, taken in as a whole, which is a different act from inspecting.

And look at what he does next, which is not analysis. He blesses them. That is the recorded response of the man in charge of quality to finished work.

You have the same permission Moses had, and looking at the whole of it has never once been the same as being satisfied with yourself. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an inspection in Exodus reach a woman holding a finished piece up to a window, and Exodus 39:43 has the looking and the blessing recorded together.

The four seconds

Let me say what the fault finding actually is, because it is not humility and it is not high standards.

High standards happen during the making. That is when they belong and that is where yours are, and they are why the work is worth collecting. The four seconds afterwards are something different: they are a way of getting to the fault before anybody else can, so that nobody can tell you something you had not already seen.

You were getting there first, and nobody has ever once been about to beat you to it. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own four seconds are for, and the written word has Moses look at all the work and bless the makers in Exodus 39:43.

And there is a cost, and it is not about confidence. You have never seen your own work. Thirty years of making things and you have looked at every one of them for four seconds as a whole and then for an hour as a defect, and you genuinely do not know what most of them look like.

Other people have seen them. You have not.

You are able to see your own work, and looking at it has never once been indulgence. His Spirit is the one who lets a woman look at something she made without hunting, and Exodus 39:43 puts the whole work in front of a man's eyes before anything is said about it.

A full minute

So here is the exercise, and the minute is the whole of it.

Take the last thing you made and look at it for a full minute without looking at the fault. You know where the fault is. Look somewhere else, deliberately, for sixty seconds.

You are able to give one minute to the whole of it, and a minute has never once been self congratulation. Exodus 39:43 has all the work looked at before a word is said, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes sixty seconds possible for a woman whose eye has gone to the flaw for thirty years.

A minute is much longer than you think. Your eye will go to the seam about four times and you will have to bring it back, and that is not failing at the exercise, that is the exercise.

Then say out loud that it is good. Not that it is perfect, not that it is your best, not a speech. It is good. Two words, said once, to nobody.

You were never required to find the fault first, and it has never once needed finding before you could look. The Spirit of God carries a woman's eye across a whole finished thing, and the written word has the work looked at and the makers blessed in Exodus 39:43.