You woke up and there was nothing there.
Not sadness. Not relief. Not the pleasant tiredness you were half expecting after a day that actually went reasonably well. Nothing at all, of any kind, and it has been like that since about seven.
And the house is full of the evidence of yesterday. Things in the wrong places. Something still on a counter that nobody has dealt with. The particular quietness of a room that had eleven people in it sixteen hours ago.
And you have started to draw a conclusion from the flatness, which is what everybody does and which is the thing I want to interrupt.
The conclusion goes one of two ways. Either the day was not good enough, and this emptiness is the honest verdict on it after all the effort. Or it is about you: that you are somehow not able to enjoy things any more, or that something has gone out of you.
Neither of those is what the flatness means.
Let me give you the actual explanation first, because it is mechanical and it is much less alarming than what you have been thinking.
A day like yesterday runs a person at a level they cannot sustain. Not emotionally. Physiologically. Hours of stimulation, attention, noise, being needed, watching everybody, managing eleven things. And then it stops, all at once, at about eleven at night.
What you have this morning is not a verdict. It is the flat water after the boat has gone past.
A still small voice
There is a scene on a mountain that is really about what happens after the noise.
And after the earthquake a fire; but the LORD was not in the fire: and after the fire a still small voice. (1 Kings 19:12, King James Version)
Wind, earthquake, fire. Three enormous events in a row, each one the sort of thing that would knock a person over, and God is explicitly not in any of them.
And then: after the fire a still small voice.
Notice the order. The quiet thing comes after the enormous things, not during them. Elijah could not have heard that voice in the middle of the wind, because a still small voice is not audible over an earthquake. Which means the flat quiet morning is not the absence of anything. It is the only acoustic condition in which certain things can be heard at all.
You are in the after rather than in the absence, and it is written into 1 Kings 19:12 that the still small voice came only once the noise had finished. The written word puts the quiet after the enormous, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a Tuesday morning rather than a story about a prophet.
And notice what Elijah was doing in that chapter. He had just had the biggest day of his life and then collapsed entirely, and God's first response to him was food and sleep.
You were never expected to be at full strength the morning after, and Scripture has God feed a man twice and let him sleep before one word of conversation happens. 1 Kings 19 puts the bread before the voice, and the Spirit of God is the one who knows exactly what a body has just spent.
Why the flatness is not a verdict
Let me be exact about why both of those conclusions are wrong.
The first was that the day was not good enough. But the flatness is not proportional to how the day went. Ask anybody who has had a genuinely wonderful one: the morning after is flat for them too. It is produced by the ending, not by the quality.
In fact the better the day, the flatter the morning, because a bigger drop has a longer fall in it.
You have been reading a physical event as a judgment, and the written word puts the quiet on the far side of the noise rather than in the place of it. 1 Kings 19:12 names the wind and the earthquake and the fire and then the small voice, and the Holy Spirit is the one who tells a woman the difference between an aftermath and a verdict.
The second conclusion was that something has gone out of you. And I want to be careful here, because a morning like this does genuinely feel like evidence about a person.
But consider what you did yesterday. You held a household. You noticed everything. You managed the hour that needed managing and you produced warmth for eleven people for the better part of a day. A woman who could do none of that would not be flat this morning; she would be untouched.
The flatness is the cost of having actually been there.
You are flat because you were present rather than because you were absent, and Scripture puts a man face down under a tree immediately after the largest day of his life. 1 Kings 19 records the collapse without a syllable of correction, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in the aftermath rather than only in the event.
One dull thing on purpose
So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately unimpressive.
Do one ordinary, dull, small thing today on purpose, and do not try to feel anything about it.
Not a treat. Not something restorative. Nothing that is supposed to lift you, because anything that is supposed to lift you becomes a test you will then fail and feel worse about.
Something dull. Put one load of washing on. Walk to the end of the road and back. Wipe one surface. Sort the thing in the drawer that has been annoying you since August.
You are able to do one dull thing without producing a feeling about it, and it has never once been required that a morning be redeemed. 1 Kings 19 has God give a man bread and sleep before any conversation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody walking to the end of a road and back for no reason.
And I want to say why dull rather than nice, because it matters.
A flat nervous system cannot be argued with and cannot be cheered up. What it responds to is small ordinary motion, repeated, with no demand attached. That is not a spiritual principle; it is simply how a person comes back, and it usually takes two or three days rather than an afternoon.
Doing something dull gives the day a shape without asking you to produce anything. And producing is exactly what you have no capacity for this morning.
You are giving a flat morning a shape rather than a meaning, and the written word puts food and sleep before the still small voice. 1 Kings 19:12 has the quiet arrive last of all, and the Spirit of God is the one who does not require a person to be at strength in order to be met.
So here is what I believe is going out over a woman standing in a kitchen at half past seven feeling absolutely nothing.
You are not broken, and a flat morning after a full day has never once been a verdict on the day or on the woman who made it. I am not asking you to feel anything and I am not promising it lifts today. 1 Kings 19:12 puts the still small voice after the wind and the earthquake and the fire, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my saying so who lifts an accusation off somebody who has been carrying one since seven o'clock this morning.
And this, which is the word I came with:
You are allowed to feel nothing the morning after, and a still small voice has never once arrived in the middle of the noise. The written word puts bread and sleep before any conversation at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with you in the flat water after the boat has gone past.
One dull thing. On purpose. And no feeling required.
Declare this over yourself
- Flatness that arrived at seven this morning, you were never a verdict on yesterday or on me. 1 Kings 19:12 says after the fire a still small voice, so by the Holy Spirit I do one dull thing on purpose in the name of Jesus.
- Conclusion I had reached about myself by lunchtime, you have never once been evidence and you were built out of an aftermath. The written word puts bread and sleep in front of a man before one word is spoken to him, and by the Holy Spirit I stop reading a physical cost as a report on my own character.
- Father, You were not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, and You waited until all of it had finished. Your word says after the fire a still small voice, so by Your Spirit I do one small dull thing today, and I produce no feeling at all, and that is enough.
1 Kings 19:12
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