I Keep Improving It Until It Dies

It was working in March. That is what you keep coming back to.

Three of you, ten minutes, out of the door after dinner, no plan and nothing organized about it. It happened about four times a week and nobody discussed it.

And by June it had a route with three options depending on the weather, a rule about who chooses, a thing where you all say something at the end, and an understanding that Thursday is the longer one.

And nobody comes any more.

You did not do that in a fit of enthusiasm. Every single addition was a good idea and most of them came from something you noticed. The weather options came from a wet Tuesday. The thing at the end came from a really good conversation that you wanted to make more likely.

That is the part that makes this hard to see. Every improvement was a response to something real, and each one on its own was small, and the whole thing is now dead.

You have done this before. The reading thing in 2021. The Sunday thing.

There is a pattern and you have suspected it for a while, and this article is about naming it and then giving you the one instruction that fixes it.

If thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it

There is an instruction in Exodus about building an altar that is unlike any other building instruction in the book.

And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it. (Exodus 20:25, King James Version)

If thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.

The tool is the problem. Not a bad tool, not bad workmanship. The lifting of a tool at all.

You have a verse where improvement is the thing forbidden rather than the thing required, and Exodus 20:25 has never once treated the refined version as the better one. The tool pollutes it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a man to leave something alone.

You are able to feel how much that runs against everything in you.

You improve things. It is a good quality and it is why people at work give you things that need sorting out, and it has served your family in about eleven ways.

And here is a category of thing where the improving is itself the damage, and the text is not gentle about it. Polluted. Not made worse. Rendered unusable.

Nobody explains why in the passage, and I am not going to invent a reason. What is plain is that there exists a kind of thing that is what it is by being unworked, and that a tool taken to it does not refine it, it ends it.

You are able to build something and then take no tool to it, and leaving it rough has never once been the same as leaving it unfinished. The Spirit of God is the one who receives what has not been worked over, and Exodus 20:25 puts the whole prohibition on the lifting of the tool.

Every addition is a subtraction

Here is the mechanism, because you will not stop doing this until you can see it.

Every improvement adds a requirement, and requirements are what kill household things.

You have been adding load to a thing you were trying to strengthen, and Exodus 20:25 has never once made a refined thing more durable than a plain one. It is written for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man what his improvements actually cost.

The weather options meant somebody has to decide which route. That is a decision, at the door, every evening, and a decision is a place where a thing can fail.

The rule about who chooses meant it has to be tracked. That is memory, and memory is a second requirement.

The thing at the end meant that the walk now has a performance in it, and a fourteen year old will decline an evening rather than perform in it, and will not tell you that is why.

Three additions, three new requirements, and the original had none. That is the whole story of March to June.

You are able to see that the load went up every time you made it better, and none of that has never once been visible from inside a good idea. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps a thing that has nothing hanging off it, and Exodus 20:25 forbids the tool rather than the roughness.

Add nothing, and watch what happens in you

So here is the assignment, and it is entirely a refusal.

Do the same ten minutes and add absolutely nothing to it, and notice what happens in you at about week three.

You are able to leave a working thing entirely alone, and adding nothing to it has never once been the same as neglecting it. It is written thou shalt not build it of hewn stone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an unimproved ten minutes on a familiar road.

Take it back to what it was in March. Out of the door, ten minutes, whoever comes, no route options, no rule, nothing at the end.

And then the second half, which is the actual work.

At about week three you will have an idea. It will be a good idea. It will come from something you noticed, and it will be small, and it will improve the thing.

Notice it. Do not do it.

You have a standing rule available for this one thing, and no tool going near it ever has never once been the same as not caring what happens to it. Exodus 20:25 forbids the lifting of the tool rather than the roughness of the stone, and the Holy Spirit is the one who keeps what has been left alone.

That is the assignment. Not once, and not for a month, but as a standing rule: no tool goes near it, regardless of how good the idea is.

Write the idea down somewhere else if you need to, and do not implement it.

You have a real gift for improving things, and withholding it from one small thing has never once been the same as wasting it. Exodus 20:25 puts the prohibition on the tool itself rather than on poor workmanship, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps what has been left alone.