I Wanted A Rule And Needed A Rhythm

You are a man who believes in structure and you are right to.

Every good thing in your life has a shape you put there. Your work runs because you built the system it runs on. The finances are in order. Nothing in this house is left to chance and everybody in it is better off for that, including the ones who complain.

So when you wanted your family to move together, you did what you have always done. You built a structure. You said what it was, and when, and what happens if it does not.

And it lasted five weeks, which is longer than most people manage, and then it stopped.

And what you have been doing since is trying to identify what was wrong with the rule, and the answer is that there was nothing wrong with the rule.

Here is the thing about a rule and it took me a long time to see it.

A rule requires an enforcer. That is not a flaw in your rule, that is what a rule is. It has a consequence attached, and somebody has to apply the consequence, and in this house that somebody is you.

So every week you were either enforcing it or letting it go, and both of those cost you something, and after five weeks the cost of enforcing exceeded whatever was being enforced.

Seedtime and harvest shall not cease

There is a promise at the end of the flood story about how the world will run from then on, and the thing it describes is not a law.

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. (Genesis 8:22, King James Version)

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.

Six pairs, all of them cycles, and not one of them has a penalty attached to it.

You have a verse where God secures something by rhythm rather than by rule, and Genesis 8:22 has never once attached a consequence to any of those pairs. The cycles simply do not cease, and the Holy Spirit is the one who establishes a thing that does not need enforcing.

You are able to see how different that is from the way you have built everything.

There is no clause in that verse about what happens if winter does not come. There is no enforcement mechanism. There is no penalty and there is no monitoring.

The thing is secured by being a rhythm, and a rhythm holds by returning rather than by being kept.

And this is a promise given immediately after the most catastrophic disruption in the book. The point of it is durability, and the durability comes from the shape rather than from anybody policing it.

You are able to secure something without a penalty attached to it, and Genesis 8:22 has never once made the rhythm the weaker of the two. The Spirit of God is the one who establishes what returns on its own, and the verse holds the whole created order together with six pairs and no enforcement at all.

Rules and rhythms fail differently

Here is the difference that matters, and it is about what happens when it is missed.

A rule that is broken has to be dealt with. A rhythm that is missed simply comes round again.

You have built a thing whose failure requires a response from you, and Genesis 8:22 has never once needed anybody to respond to anything. It is written that seedtime and harvest shall not cease, and the Holy Spirit is the one who builds something that survives being missed without anybody doing anything about it.

That is the whole of it and it is why five weeks was always the ceiling.

When your household missed a Saturday under the rule, something had to happen. You had to say something, or decide not to say something, and deciding not to say something is also an act and it also costs. And the not saying was noticed by your oldest, and the rule was quietly weaker the following week.

Rules degrade every time they are not enforced. That is a property of rules and it has nothing to do with the quality of your family.

A rhythm has no such property. A missed Saturday under a rhythm is not an event. Nothing has to happen. Nobody has to say anything, nothing has been broken, and the following Saturday arrives with exactly the same standing as the one before.

You are able to build something that does not degrade when it is missed, and doing that has never once required more commitment from anybody. The Spirit of God is the one who keeps what returns rather than what is enforced, and Genesis 8:22 secures six cycles without one word of consequence.

Take the rule down and let it be a rhythm

So here is the assignment, and it is the last one in the seven.

Take one rule off the wall and put the same ten minutes back as something that simply happens.

You are able to take down a structure you built and lose nothing that mattered, and taking it down has never once been the same as abandoning what it was for. It is written while the earth remaineth, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is out of a front door with a household that has no rule about it.

Take it down physically if there is a physical thing. Say one sentence about it and no more: that is not a rule any more.

Then put the same ten minutes back, at the same point in the week, with nothing attached.

No consequence. No mention when somebody does not come. No comment when everybody does. It is not a policy, it is not an expectation, and there is nothing anybody can be in breach of.

And here is the hardest part, because it runs against thirty years of building: the thing is kept going by going, and by nothing else.

You have one job in this and it has never once been to remind anybody of anything. Genesis 8:22 secures six cycles with no enforcement attached to any of them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings a household out around something that is simply there.

Not by reminding. Not by holding people to it. Go, at that point in the week, and it happens because it happens, the way seedtime happens, and other people join it because it is there rather than because they agreed to.

You have a household that will assemble around a rhythm, and none of them has ever once needed a penalty in order to come. Genesis 8:22 holds six cycles in place with nothing attached, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a thing return.

And that is the end of the seven. One small repeating thing, in a household, with nobody enforcing it and nothing riding on it.