An Hour Spent on Nothing

Here is a small test and it only takes a second.

Imagine you took an hour this week. You got it, nobody objected, it happened.

Now imagine somebody asks you afterward, pleasantly, with no edge on it at all: what did you do with it?

Watch what happens in you.

Most people, at that question, immediately start assembling an answer. And notice that the assembling starts before the hour has even been taken, in an imaginary conversation, about a thing that has not happened yet.

That is the whole reason the hour keeps disappearing.

It is not that there is no time. You have found time for harder things than this. It is that an hour has to survive being described, and nothing survives being described except a thing that had something in it.

So the hour gets a book. Or a walk, which sounds healthy. Or a job that was going to need doing anyway and can now be counted twice. Something. Anything that would let you answer the question without your voice going up at the end.

And an hour with something in it is not the hour we were talking about. It is a task with better lighting.

Nothing better than this

There is a verse in Ecclesiastes that a person raised to be useful can find genuinely difficult, and I want to put it up plainly because it is plain.

There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. (Ecclesiastes 2:24, King James Version)

Nothing better.

Not nothing wrong with. Not permissible in moderation. Nothing better, which is a ranking, and the things being ranked are eating, drinking, and a soul enjoying good.

And then the second sentence, which is the one that catches people. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.

From the hand of God. The same phrase you would use about a deliverance or a provision, used here about an ordinary man having a meal and being glad.

You are looking at ordinary gladness described as coming from His hand, and it has never once needed a purpose attached to qualify. Ecclesiastes 2:24 puts eating and enjoying at the top of what is available rather than at the edge of what is allowed, and it is the Holy Spirit who lets somebody raised to be useful hear that without immediately looking for the catch.

The question is not a real question

Now let me deal with the person who asks. This is the part I most want you to hear, because it changes the size of the problem.

Almost nobody who asks what you did with your hour is auditing you.

They are making conversation. It is the same question as how was your day, and it wants the same weight of answer, which is almost none. The person asking has already stopped listening by the time you get to the third word, because they were being friendly rather than gathering evidence.

The audit is not happening out there. The audit is happening in your head, in advance, and it has been running for years, and it is very thorough, and it has never once been requested by another human being.

That is good news, and I want to say it plainly. The thing standing between you and that hour is not your family and it is not your friends. It is an imaginary conversation.

You are being examined by nobody, and no person in your life has ever asked you to justify an afternoon. Ecclesiastes 2:24 calls plain enjoyment good without requiring anybody to account for it. The Spirit of God is the one who can quiet a courtroom that only ever had one person sitting in it.

I do want to say the fair half, because there is a real thing underneath this. A person does not invent that courtroom out of nowhere. Somewhere along the line, being useful was how you were safe, or how you were loved, or how you were sure you were not a burden. That is not a small thing and it did not come from nowhere.

You are not being told to stop being useful, and the usefulness has never once been the part that needs putting down. The written word sets the enjoying inside a working life rather than against it, and His Spirit is entirely able to loosen the grip of a habit without insulting the reason it was picked up.

Decide the answer first

So here is the practical part, and it is a strange one, and it works.

Decide the answer before you take the hour.

The answer is: nothing.

Say it now, out loud, in advance, so that the imaginary conversation has already been had and lost its power. Somebody asks what you did with the hour. You say: nothing. Then you smile, and you say something about the weather, and the conversation moves on because that is what conversations do.

The reason this works is that the whole difficulty lives in the anticipation. A rehearsed answer takes the anticipation apart, because there is no longer anything to prepare.

And do not add. Nothing much is a hedge. I just sat down for a bit is an apology with a smile on it. Nothing. One word, warmly said.

You are able to answer nothing without apologizing for it, and no hour has ever needed a defense that nobody was going to ask for. Ecclesiastes 2:24 ranks the plain enjoyment first without a single condition attached. The same Spirit who inspired that verse is not standing anywhere near a person with a clipboard.