I Cannot Stand For Long

You can be on your feet for about four minutes.

You know that number precisely, the way people know these numbers, and you have arranged a whole house around it. The kettle. Where things are kept. How you do the thing in the morning in two parts.

And there is a rule you have made that nobody gave you.

If it is done sitting down, it does not count.

You would not defend that out loud. If somebody said it to you about another man you would tell them it was nonsense. But it operates in you, all day, and the result is that you have decided you cannot do anything, when what is actually true is that you cannot do anything standing up.

Those are different sentences and only one of them is true.

So this article has one job. It is going to take the rule apart and then hand you ten minutes that happens in a chair.

And I want to say the ordinary thing this site says at this point: nothing here is medical, nothing here is telling you what to do about the four minutes, and nothing here is going to suggest that you push anything.

And they sat him upon a stone

There is a scene in Exodus where the outcome of a battle depends on a man's hands staying up, and the solution is not what anybody would write.

But Moses' hands were heavy; and they took a stone, and put it under him, and he sat thereon; and Aaron and Hur stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side. (Exodus 17:12, King James Version)

But Moses' hands were heavy, and they took a stone and put it under him, and he sat on it, and Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on one side and the other on the other side.

He sat down. In the middle of the decisive event of that day, the man on whom the whole thing depended sat down on a stone.

You have a passage where sitting is written into the account without one word of apology, and Exodus 17:12 has never once treated it as the lesser way to do the thing. The stone is put under him and the work continues, and the Holy Spirit is the one who arranges what a body needs in order to keep going.

You are able to see how much the text does not say. It does not say Moses regretted it. It does not say he should have kept standing. It does not treat the stone as a concession that weakened the outcome.

The stone is simply part of how it was done, listed in the same sentence as the two men holding his hands.

And the battle is won. Nothing in the result is discounted for the position of the man.

You are able to do the decisive thing from a seated position, and Exodus 17:12 has never once made the standing the part that mattered. The Spirit of God is the one who is present with a man on a stone with his arms held up, and the passage records the sitting as ordinary.

Where the rule came from

Here is a thing worth doing once and then leaving alone.

That rule is not yours and it is not from the book. It is the residue of a working life.

You have carried a standard from a job into a body, and Exodus 17:12 has never once graded a man by whether he was upright. It is written that they took a stone and put it under him, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates what a man was taught from what is true about him now.

For forty years, sitting down at work meant one of two things: you were on a break, or you were not doing your job. That was accurate in that setting and it built something good in you.

And it came home with you, the way these things do, and it now applies to a room in your own house where nobody is being paid for anything.

You are not on a break. There is no shift. The whole framework in which sitting meant not working has been gone for eleven years and the rule has outlived every part of the situation that made it sensible.

You are able to leave a rule behind in the place it belonged, and doing that has never once been the same as having become a man who takes it easy. The Spirit of God is the one who is present where the work is being done in whatever position, and Exodus 17:12 puts the stone in the middle of the decisive hour.

Ten minutes in the chair, with somebody

So here is the assignment.

Do ten minutes sitting down with somebody, using whatever moves without cost, and count it.

You are able to do ten real minutes without standing up, and none of it has never once needed to be done on your feet to be the thing. It is written that they put a stone under him and he sat thereon, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a chair in a front room.

Whatever moves without cost. Your arms probably. Passing something back and forth. Reaching. Moving a thing from one side to another and back. You know what your hands and arms will do and I do not.

Ten minutes, which is the same ten minutes everybody else on this site is being asked for. Not a reduced version and not a special allowance made for you.

And with somebody, which is what this site is actually about and which is where the whole thing turns for you.

Get your grandson, or your wife, or whoever is in. Have them stand or sit opposite you and pass something back and forth for ten minutes.

Because here is the thing you have not considered: a nine year old does not experience a seated grandfather passing a ball as a diminished activity. He experiences it as his grandfather playing with him, which is the only category he has for it.

You have somebody in this family for whom this has never once been a smaller version of anything. Exodus 17:12 records the stone and the raised hands in one sentence, and the Spirit of God is the one in that room with the two of you.

And then count it. Say it to yourself: I did ten minutes today.