The Same Empty Page

You have opened that book about a dozen times today and the page has not changed once.

It is the order book, or the diary, or whatever you keep it in, and the page for this week has three things on it and two of them are finished. You know that. You knew it at nine o'clock and you knew it at eleven, and you have been back four times since lunch.

And you are not checking. You know exactly what is in there. What you are doing is something else: you are going to the place where good news would appear, on the off chance that the act of looking somehow participates in it.

It does not. The book is paper. It has never once generated an order.

I am not going to tell you how to fill it, because that would be strategy and there is none of it on this site. And I am not going to tell you what next week holds, because I do not know. I am going to talk about where a person puts their expectation.

My expectation is from him

There is a line in Psalm 62 where David says something very precise about where he is looking, and the precision is the whole value of it.

He is in trouble and waiting, and he names the direction his expectation faces.

My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him. (Psalm 62:5, King James Version)

You have somewhere to direct your expectation, and it has never once been a page in a book. Psalm 62:5 names God as the source that expectation comes from rather than a circumstance to be watched, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that to a counter with an open ledger and a pen on it.

Notice the word only. Wait thou only upon God. Not mostly. Not as well as watching the door. He is telling his own soul where to face, which means he had to tell it, because it was facing somewhere else.

And notice the direction. My expectation is from him. It comes from God, not from the page, and the page has nothing in it to give anybody even when it is full.

You are able to turn your expectation somewhere that can answer, and the page has never once been able to. The Spirit of God is the one who makes a man instructing his own soul reach a woman standing at her own counter, and Psalm 62:5 names the source and the direction in one short line.

Twelve times is not checking

Let me say what the twelve openings actually are, because the word checking makes them sound reasonable.

Checking is what you do once. Anything after that is a ritual, and a ritual works on the person doing it rather than on the thing it is aimed at. You have been performing a small ceremony at that counter a dozen times a day, and what it produces is a dozen small disappointments.

You were never going to find something new in there, and the page has never once changed while nobody was looking. The Holy Spirit is the one who shows a woman what her own hands keep doing, and the written word tells a soul to wait only upon God in Psalm 62:5.

And here is the cost, and it is not the time. Every opening resets you. You get four or five minutes into something, and then the ritual interrupts it, and you come back to the work cooler than you left it. By the end of a day like that you are tired and you have finished almost nothing, and you cannot point to where it went.

The book is not the problem. It is a good book and you need it tomorrow. It is the dozen visits.

You are able to put it out of reach until tomorrow, and doing it has never once meant you stopped caring. His Spirit is the one who interrupts a ritual in a woman's own hands, and Psalm 62:5 tells a soul where to face because a soul does not do it by itself.

Close it, shelve it, work

So here is the exercise, and it is physical and it is specific.

Close the book and put it on a shelf until tomorrow. Not on the counter. Not face down on the counter, which is still a visit away. On a shelf, or in another room.

You are able to close it for one day, and closing it has never once been neglect. Psalm 62:5 names where expectation comes from, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes one shelved book possible this afternoon for a woman who has opened it a dozen times.

Then say the verse, or just the last half of it, out loud once. My expectation is from him. Say it at the counter before you walk away from the book, because that is the moment the habit will argue with you.

Then do one ordinary piece of the work that nobody has asked for yet. Something with your hands, done today, not aimed at filling the page.

You were never waiting on that page, and your expectation has never once come from it. The Spirit of God carries a woman's attention away from a surface that cannot answer, and the written word puts expectation in God's hands and says only in Psalm 62:5.