None of Them Was the One That Came

You have a plan for the barn going. You have one for a bad year, and one for two bad years, and a different one for what happens if the price does what it did in 2008.

You have thought about what you would do if your knee went properly. You have thought about a fire, which is not morbid, it is what a man who has seen one does.

Thirty years of this, and you would not call it worrying, and you would be right; it is not the same thing at all. You sleep. It is more like maintenance, done in the head, in the tractor, over the course of a life.

And here is what you noticed in the spring and have not been able to unnotice.

Not one of the things that actually happened was on any of the lists.

Not your brother. Not the thing with the tenancy, which came out of a direction nobody was looking at. Not the year your wife was ill, and not the way the boy turned out, which is the best thing in your life and which you did not plan for either.

Every real event of thirty years arrived from outside the whole arrangement.

And the plans are still being maintained.

What this page will not do

This is the closing category and it has one rule, which is that nothing is added. So there is nothing to take up here and no better approach to planning.

I am not going to tell you to stop being prudent. A man in your work who does not think ahead is a man who loses a herd, and the insurance and the succession and the machinery being serviced are not what this page is about.

I am not going to tell you the planning was worry in disguise. It was not. You know the difference and so do I.

And I am not going to tell you that God will keep everything off the list. Several of the things that came were hard and He did not keep them off.

What is being put down is narrower than any of that.

You are not being asked to be careless. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not a reward for having stopped thinking, and the Holy Spirit is at that gate with a man who has maintained a great deal for thirty years.

The verse is a handing over, not a stopping

There is a line in Psalm 37 with a very particular verb in it.

Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.Psalm 37:5

Commit. The older sense of the word underneath it is to roll something onto somebody, the way you would roll a weight off your own back onto a cart.

That is not the same as abandoning it. Nothing in the verse says stop working, stop thinking, stop preparing. A man rolling a load onto a cart is still going the same way with the same load; what has changed is what is bearing it.

And then he shall bring it to pass, which is about the outcome rather than the planning.

That is the division this whole page turns on. The work is yours. The outcome is not, and it never was, and thirty years of contingency planning has been a quiet attempt to hold both.

You are not asked to carry the outcome as well as the work. Scripture says commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass, Psalm 37:5, and the committing is a transfer of weight rather than a cessation of effort, and the Holy Spirit is the one who bears what a man rolls off.

What the maintenance costs

It is not sleep and it is not obvious, which is why it has run for thirty years without ever presenting a bill.

It is that you have never been fully in an evening. That is not my opinion. Scripture stands behind it in Psalm 37:5, and the Holy Spirit brings it near.

Some part of you, quietly and constantly, has been running the machinery: checking a scenario, adjusting a plan, noticing something that would need to change if the price did what it did in 2008.

That part has never been switched off, because there has never been an occasion when it obviously ought to be, because nothing dramatic is happening and the work is only ever prudent.

And here is the thing the spring showed you, and it is the only argument on this page. The maintenance has not once produced a plan that was used. Not because you planned badly. Because what comes is not on lists.

So the machinery has been running for thirty years and its output has never once been drawn on.

You are not obliged to keep the machinery on. Scripture says which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature, Matthew 6:27, and it is a question about output rather than an accusation about character, and the Holy Spirit is not asking any man to keep a system running that has never been used.

What is put down

Not the plans. Not the insurance, not the succession, not the servicing.

One evening.

That is the whole of what is being asked and there is nothing after it. Tonight, when the machinery starts, which it will, at about the usual time, do not run it. Do not rehearse the barn or the bad year or the thing about the price.

Not forever. One evening, and if it comes back tomorrow you have lost nothing. Scripture holds that ground in Psalm 37:5, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries it into a room like this one.

And do not replace it. Do not decide to think about something more useful, do not adopt a practice, and do not make a rule about how often you will let yourself do it.

One evening, unrehearsed. Then go to bed.

You are not going to be caught out by having had one evening off. Scripture says sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, Matthew 6:34, and it is a boundary drawn by somebody entirely realistic about trouble, and the Holy Spirit has never once required a man to hold a fortnight he has not reached.