Straight On To The Next One

You finished it at about four and you had started the next one by ten past.

The tools were still warm. You put the last thing down, stepped back for what was probably two seconds, and then picked up the timber for the next job because it was there and because your hands do not know what else to do.

And the thing you finished is behind you now, and you could not describe it. It is out of the way, wrapped, ready to go, and it has not been looked at by anybody including the man who made it.

You have done that after every job for as long as you have been working. There is no moment at the end. There is only the next beginning, which arrives about six minutes after the last ending and swallows it.

I am not going to turn this into a lesson about rest, and I am not going to tell you to slow down generally, which is not a thing anybody can act on. I am going to show you one instruction Jesus gave to men who had just finished something.

Come ye yourselves apart

There is a moment in Mark where the disciples come back from working and start telling Jesus everything, and He interrupts them with an instruction about stopping.

They are busy, there are people everywhere, and the timing of what He says is the point of it.

And he said unto them, Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while: for there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. (Mark 6:31, King James Version)

You are allowed a pause at the end of a piece of work, and it has never once been slackness to take one. Mark 6:31 has an instruction to stop given in the middle of pressure rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a workshop doorway with the next job's timber stacked at somebody's feet.

Notice when He says it. Not when the demand let up. There were many coming and going, which means the moment was as bad as any moment, and the instruction is given anyway.

And notice the size of it. Rest a while. Not take a month. A while, which is a small unit, and which is exactly what a man who cannot stop can actually do.

You have permission for a while, and a while has never once needed to be long to be real. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an instruction given in a crowd reach a man with his hands already on the next thing, and Mark 6:31 puts the stopping in the middle of the pressure rather than after it.

Why the next one starts so fast

Let me say what the six minutes are doing, because it is not efficiency.

Finishing is an exposed moment. For about two seconds the thing is done, and it is either good or it is not, and there is nothing left to fix. Starting the next one closes that gap. A man with his hands on new timber is not a man standing in front of a verdict.

You were closing a gap rather than saving time, and the gap has never once contained a verdict. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his own hands do at four o'clock, and the written word has Jesus tell working men to come apart and rest a while in Mark 6:31.

And here is what it costs, and it is not rest and it is not health. You have never once had the end of a job. You have had hundreds of beginnings and no endings, and a working life made entirely of beginnings is exhausting in a way that no amount of sleep touches.

The pause is not a reward for the work. It is the last part of it.

You are able to have an ending, and an ending has never once been time taken off anything. His Spirit is the one who lets a man stand in the two seconds without reaching for the next thing, and Mark 6:31 makes the stopping an instruction rather than a luxury.

One minute, before anything else

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

Before you start the next thing, stand still in front of the last one for a minute. Not after you have started. Before. That is the difference between an ending and an afterthought.

You are able to give one minute to the end of something, and giving it has never once been laziness. Mark 6:31 has the rest instructed in the middle of the coming and going, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes sixty seconds possible for a man who has never had six.

Put your hands down or put them in your pockets, because your hands are the problem and they will reach. Look at the whole thing rather than the joint you were worried about.

Then say out loud that it is good, and then start the next job. The job is not going anywhere. It has been there for four days and it will survive another minute.

You were never going to lose anything by stopping for a minute, and no job has ever once been lost to sixty seconds. The Spirit of God carries a man into a pause his hands have always skipped, and the written word says come ye yourselves apart and rest a while in Mark 6:31.