One Hour That Is Nobody's

This is the last of the seven, and it is the only one that asks you to add something rather than take something away.

Go through this week, hour by hour, and find one that is not owed to anybody.

Most people cannot. Not because the week is packed with leisure they are pretending is work, but because every hour has a claimant: a job, a child, a parent, a house, a commitment, or sleep, which is also owed, to a body that will collect either way.

And when people do find a candidate hour, something interesting happens. They immediately think of what could go in it. The thing they have been meaning to do. The job that would make next week easier.

That is the reflex I want to interrupt, because an hour with a purpose in it is not the hour I am talking about.

He makes me lie down

There is a line in the shepherd psalm that people read past because they are heading for the still waters.

He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. (Psalm 23:2, King James Version)

He maketh me to lie down.

Sheep are not naturally still. They do not lie down when there is anything to be anxious about, which is most of the time, and a shepherd who wants a resting flock has to produce the conditions in which resting is possible.

So the verb is doing work. It is not he permits me to lie down. It is not he suggests it. Psalm 23:2 makes the rest something arranged for the sheep by somebody with more authority than they have, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person hear that as care rather than as compulsion.

The green pasture is not a reward for a sheep that has done well. It is a place the shepherd has taken it.

You are being lain down rather than left to arrange it, and the rest has never once been yours to manufacture. Psalm 23:2 has the shepherd producing the conditions rather than issuing an instruction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an hour feel arranged rather than stolen.

Empty is the point

Now, the hour itself, and why I do not want anything in it.

The reason to leave it empty is not that emptiness is spiritually superior. It is that the moment an hour has a purpose it acquires a claimant, and the claimant is the purpose, and now it is another owed hour with a nicer name on it.

You have done this before. You have carved out time for something restorative and then found yourself behind on the restorative thing, and felt bad about being behind on rest, which is one of the more absurd sentences a person can say out loud about their own week.

So it stays empty. You may spend it doing nothing, or something trivial, or something you would be slightly embarrassed to describe. That is not a waste of the hour, that is the hour working, and Psalm 23:2 does not record the sheep achieving anything in the pasture, and the Holy Spirit has never once asked for a report.

You are not required to show anything for it, and no account of that hour was ever going to be asked for. Psalm 23:2 records a flock lying down with nothing at all achieved in the pasture, and the Spirit of God is the one who can make an unproductive hour feel like provision rather than like waste.

You are allowed an hour with nothing in it, and it has never once needed to be justified by its contents. The written word has a flock lying down without a single task recorded, and the Spirit of God is the one who can give a person something with no purpose attached to it at all.

Defending it once

Here is the part that actually determines whether this works, and it is not the scheduling.

Something will come for that hour. Not next month. This week. Psalm 23:2 has the shepherd arrange the ground rather than hope for it, and the Holy Spirit does the arranging through somebody actually saying a sentence. Something reasonable, from somebody who does not know, and it will be a genuine ask and the hour will look, on the calendar, exactly like a gap.

And you will give it away, because you have given away every other one, and because the hour has no name and therefore no defense.

So you defend it once. Not repeatedly, not forever. Once. You say: I have got something then. Which is true, because you have got that hour then.

Doing that a single time changes the hour's status in your own head from a gap to a thing, and Psalm 23:2 has a shepherd producing conditions rather than hoping for them, and the Holy Spirit works through somebody actually saying a sentence out loud on a Tuesday.

You are permitted to defend something with no name on it, and it has never once needed a better reason. Psalm 23:2 shows rest being arranged deliberately rather than left to chance, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a person keeps a small promise to themselves.