The Lamp He Lights For Nobody

It takes about four seconds and he has done it every night for seven years.

He would rather not describe it exactly, and it does not matter for this. It is a small physical thing, in the same room, at roughly the same time, and it is connected to a particular thing he has been waiting for.

Nobody in that house has ever remarked on it. Two of them have certainly noticed. It is not the sort of thing anybody would raise.

Here is what has changed in the last year or so.

He has begun to feel foolish.

Not about God. That is worth saying clearly, because he has turned it over and it is not that. He does not feel foolish for believing anything.

He feels foolish standing in a room doing a four second thing, on his own, for the two thousand five hundred and somethingth time, for a thing that has not come and shows no sign of coming.

And the feeling has started to arrive before he does it rather than after, which is new, and which means there is now a small argument in his chest every night at about the same time.

He has told nobody. There is no way to describe it that does not sound either sadder or sillier than it is.

If you keep doing a small thing for something that has not come, sit down at this table. Nobody is going to tell you to keep it up.

The verse states the sickness and does not treat it

There is a proverb that gets quoted in halves, and the half that is skipped is the one written for a man in a room at ten at night.

Hope deferred maketh the heart sick.Proverbs 13:12

Stop there. The verse goes on and we will not go on with it yet, because the second half has been used for so long as a way of hurrying people out of the first that it has become a lid.

Look at what the first half actually does.

It does not say hope deferred is a test of character. It does not say a stronger man's heart would hold. It does not say the sickness is a symptom of something wrong in the person carrying it.

It states a consequence. Hope, deferred, makes the heart sick. That is a piece of plain observation put into Scripture by God, with no correction, no encouragement and no advice attached to that clause.

You are not failing at something by being heart sick, and the word states the sickness before it says anything else. Proverbs 13:12 records it as fact rather than fault, and it is the Holy Spirit who kept that clause in that order rather than a tidier one, which means the thing you have been feeling foolish about is a thing God wrote down first.

Nobody is going to tell you to keep it up

Now what is not coming, because the bracing for it is half of what is tiring in the first place.

Nobody is going to tell you to keep doing the small thing. That would make it a duty, and a duty is a thing a person can fail at, and there are enough of those already without adding a four second one at ten at night. Isaiah 42:3 says a bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a word at the weight a person can take.

Nobody is going to tell you to stop either. That is not mine to say and it is not this article's business, and a man who has done a thing for seven years does not need a website deciding about it.

And nobody is going to tell you that the feeling is unbelief. It is not. Feeling foolish about a long unanswered thing is what happens to human beings, and it has nothing whatever to do with what you believe about God, which is why you were able to separate those two clearly when you turned it over.

You are being seen rather than assessed, and the seeing came before any word of advice. Psalm 56:8 asks whether the tears are not in His book, and speaks of them being put into His bottle, and it is His Spirit who makes an image like that something a person can lean on, which means the seven years have been counted somewhere with great care.

And the second half of the proverb does exist, and it is true, and it is coming from the same God. But it is not for tonight, and rushing you into it would be exactly what has been done to you every time somebody meant well.

You are held in the first half for as long as the first half is where you are. Isaiah 42:3 says a bruised reed He does not break and smoking flax He does not quench, and it is the Holy Spirit who carries a word at the temperature a person can take, which means nobody here is moving you on.

God is the one holding you, and He has been in that room for all seven years of the small thing.