Nobody In This House Is Free At The Same Time

You have tried to find the evening. There is no evening.

Tuesday one of them has practice. Wednesday your wife is not in until half past eight. Thursday the oldest works, Friday the middle one is out, and the weekend has its own set of obligations that have grown in over the last two years like ivy.

So you did what anybody does. You went looking for the window. The hour when everybody is home and nothing is on. You looked for it honestly, with a calendar, and you found that it exists roughly one evening in nine.

And an evening in nine is not a household habit. It is an occasion.

Here is the thing that keeps this stuck. You are not looking for time. You have time. There is time all over this week. What you are looking for is time that everybody has at once, and that is a different and much rarer thing, and it is the wrong thing to be hunting.

Because the search itself has become the obstacle. Every week you scan for the window, you do not find it, and the not finding is the reason nothing happens. The scanning has replaced the doing.

So we are going to stop looking for the window.

A time to every purpose

There is a passage in Ecclesiastes about times and seasons, and it is famous, and it is usually read as a comfort. Read it as a structure instead.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version)

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.

Notice how the sentence is built. It does not say every purpose will find a time if the household is organized enough. It says a time exists, already, for the purpose. The time is attached to the thing.

You have a purpose that already has a time attached to it, and that has never once depended on the four calendars in this house agreeing with each other. Ecclesiastes 3:1 fixes the time to the purpose rather than to the availability of everybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a man which ten minutes were always there.

You have been treating time as a thing you find. The passage treats it as a thing that is appointed.

And the list that follows is instructive. A time to plant and a time to pluck up. A time to break down and a time to build up. Every pair in it is short, ordinary and physical. None of it needs a clear evening. All of it happens inside a working life.

So the question is not when is everybody free. The question is what is already happening every single day at the same point, that this could be fastened to.

You are looking for a fixed point rather than a free evening, and the written word has never once made the appointed time depend on the crowd who show up for it. The Holy Spirit is the one who fixes something small into a week that is already full, and the passage in Ecclesiastes puts a time under heaven for every purpose there is.

Every household has a fixed point. Yours does too, and you have never thought of it as one.

Whoever is standing there at seven

Here is the practical move, and it is a change of question.

Do not ask when everybody is free. Ask what time something already happens every day, without fail, whoever is home.

You are able to fasten ten minutes to a thing this house already does, and it has never once been necessary to invent a new slot in the week for it. It is written that there is a time to every purpose under heaven, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an ordinary hour into an appointed one.

In most houses it is one of about four things. The moment the dinner is cleared. The moment the dog needs to go out. The point at the end of the evening when somebody puts the trash out. Or simply seven o'clock, which happens whether anybody plans it or not.

Pick one. Write nothing down. Tell nobody it is a scheme.

And then the rule that makes this survive: it happens with whoever is standing there.

Not with the family. Not with the people who were meant to be there. With whoever is physically present at that moment, which some days is three of you and some days is one of you and you.

You were never given the job of assembling this household before anything good can happen in it, and the appointed time has never once required a quorum. The Spirit of God is the one who meets whoever comes to the door at seven, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 attaches the time to the purpose and not to the attendance.

This is the piece that people resist, so let me put it plainly. If it only counts when everybody is there, then a household of five has made every good thing hostage to its least available member.

Whoever is standing there. That is the whole rule.

Ten minutes, at that point, every day it is possible

So here is the assignment.

Choose the fixed point. Then at that point, go outside and move for ten minutes with whoever is in the room.

You have a week that is already full and still has ten minutes in it at the same point every day, and that has never once been a lesser kind of time than a clear evening would be. It is written in Ecclesiastes that a time exists for every purpose, and the Holy Spirit is the one who redeems ten minutes out of a Tuesday nobody thought was available.

You have a driveway or a path or a corner, and outside is best because outside makes it obvious that something is happening and other people can join it without being invited.

And what you do there does not matter at all. Move a ball between you. Walk to the corner together. Go up and down the driveway throwing something. Nobody is being trained.

Two more things, and then I will leave it alone.

Do not move the fixed point to suit anybody. The instant it becomes negotiable, it becomes a scheduling problem again, and the scheduling problem is what killed every previous attempt.

And do not comment on who was not there. Ever. The person who arrives late and finds it already happening will join it inside two weeks. The person who is told they missed it will defend themselves instead.

You are able to hold one point in the day without holding anybody to account for it, and keeping it has never once required anybody else to keep it with you. The Spirit of God is the one who builds a habit into a household from the inside, and the written word puts a time under heaven for the purpose whether or not the house is full.