Clocking Off Under A Blessing

He is good at his work and everybody who has ever employed him has said so.

The day ends at about ten past six, or later, and there is a specific two minutes that happens somewhere between putting the tools away and getting in the van, and he has been doing it for thirty years without ever deciding to.

He reviews the list.

Not the whole list. Just the part he did not get to. Four items, usually, sometimes six. The call he did not make. The thing he said he would look at on Tuesday and has now not looked at for eleven days. The quote. The other quote.

And then he drives home under it.

It sits in the passenger seat all the way. It comes into the house with him and it is present, at low volume, through the meal, and his wife knows it is there and has learned not to ask because asking makes it louder.

It leaves him at about nine, most nights. On bad weeks it goes to bed with him and wakes him up at ten past four with an item on it that is genuinely not urgent and cannot be dealt with at ten past four by anybody.

He has done a great deal of good work in thirty years. That is not in doubt and he would say so himself if you pushed him.

He has never once ended a day on it.

Establish Thou the work of our hands

Put the tools down properly and stand still a minute, because there is a line at the end of a psalm about the shortness of a life, and it is a request about work that a man has already stopped doing.

The psalm has spent eleven verses on how brief everything is and how quickly the years go. It is not a comfortable psalm and it is not trying to be.

And then, at the very end, this.

And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish Thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish Thou it.Psalm 90:17

Establish Thou the work of our hands.

Not: help me get more done. Not: give me a longer list. The request is that God would take work that a man has done and make it stand, which is a request about the after, and it is asked twice in the same verse because the man asking wanted it heard.

Hear this at the end of your own yard. You are not the one who has to make it stand, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture asks God to establish the work of the hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the establishing, and He has been doing it for thirty years while a man drove home under a list.

Now let me name what those two minutes actually are, because you have never called them anything.

They are a verdict. Every day at ten past six you hold a small hearing about yourself, and the only evidence admitted is the part that did not get done, and there is no defense and there is no summing up for the other side.

You would not run a business that way and you would not let anybody run one on you.

And notice what is not in it. Thirty years of work is not in it. The four things you did do are not in it. The man who rang last month to say the roof is exactly right is not in it, and neither is the fact that you were on time.

Hear this too, and let it come off the passenger seat. You have not been failing every day for thirty years, and Scripture is what says so. What is written asks God to establish work rather than asking a man to finish it, and the Spirit of God has never once met a man at ten past six with a list of four things.

And now the practical piece, and it is not about getting more done.

You cannot delete the two minutes. Thirty years of a habit does not stop because somebody explains it to you, and any plan that requires you to simply not do it will fail by Thursday.

So do not delete it. Put something after it.

Let the review happen, at ten past six, exactly as it does. And then, standing at the van with the keys in your hand, say the line out loud.

Establish Thou the work of our hands.

Ten words, at the end of the day, out loud, over a yard.

Because the last thing said is the thing a man drives home under, and at the moment the last thing said is four items, and it does not have to be.