I Have Always Done The Big Version

It became a thing about you somewhere around the fifth year.

Before that it was just what you did. You liked doing it, you were good at it, and there was a stretch of about four years where the whole business was pure enjoyment.

Then somebody described you as the man who does it. And somebody else said it to somebody new. And a person you had not seen in a while asked, when they arrived, whether you were doing the whole thing again this year, and there was an expectation in the question that had not been there before.

That is the year it stopped being what you do and started being who you are, and nobody chose it and nobody noticed.

Now it is eleven years on and you are tired, and the tiredness is not the problem either.

The problem is that you cannot see a way to do less without it being a statement. Because it is not a plan any more, it is a reputation, and a reputation cannot be quietly reduced. Any change to it is visible, is remarked on, and gets read as information about the man.

So you keep doing the big version, and you keep being tired, and you have never once said any of this to a living soul because saying it would sound like fishing for people to tell you it is worth it.

The day of small things

There is a rebuke in Zechariah about scale that is aimed in the direction nobody expects.

For who hath despised the day of small things? (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)

It is a question and it is a rebuke, and the thing being rebuked is contempt for the small.

The setting matters. This is said while a much reduced temple is being rebuilt, by people who could remember the previous one and were openly unimpressed by what was going up. The small version was real, and it was genuinely smaller, and the people looking at it were doing arithmetic against the old one.

And God does not tell them the new one is secretly bigger. He asks who despises a small day, and the question is pointed at the ones doing the measuring.

You are permitted to build the small version without contempt landing on it, and it is written into Zechariah 4:10 as a rebuke to the ones who measure rather than to the ones who build. The written word takes the contempt out of the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available to a man who has been measuring himself for eleven years.

And notice that the question includes you.

You have been despising the day of small things in your own house, and Zechariah 4:10 puts that question to whoever is doing it rather than only to a crowd. Scripture asks it as an open question, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a man notice that he is the strictest measurer in the building.

Whose reputation is it

Now let me be exact about who the big version is actually for, because it has changed and nobody told you.

For the first four years it was for the people. You enjoyed making a thing that made a room go up.

Somewhere after that it became for the reputation. Not out of vanity, exactly. More that the reputation existed now, and reputations require maintenance, and the maintaining became a job that runs alongside the actual work.

So there are two things happening every year: you are making the day, and you are also servicing an identity. The second one is invisible, and it is the one that has been costing you since about year six.

You have been servicing an identity as well as making a day, and the written word puts contempt for the small squarely in the wrong. Zechariah 4:10 asks who despises it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who names a second job that has been running unpaid for years.

And here is the part I most want you to see. The reputation is not being maintained by the people. It is being maintained by you.

Test it honestly. How many people in that family would actually say anything if one part of it were half the size? One, possibly. Most of them would not register it. Several of them, particularly the ones who have watched you go quiet by about six in the evening, would be quietly relieved.

You have been guarding a reputation nobody in that room is holding you to, and Scripture puts the whole question of scale into the mouth of God rather than into the family's. Zechariah 4:10 rebukes the despising, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with a man who has been the only party enforcing his own legend.

One part, small on purpose

So here is the assignment, and the on purpose is the whole of it.

Choose one part of it and do the small version deliberately, and tell nobody it is deliberate.

One part. Not the whole day, which would be a statement and would be read as one. One component, done at half the scale, quietly, as though that were simply the size it is this year.

You are able to make one thing small on purpose, and it has never once required you to announce a change to anybody. Zechariah 4:10 asks who has despised the day of small things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with a man doing something deliberately modest with nobody knowing.

And the reason for telling nobody is not secrecy. It is that announcing it makes it a subject, and a subject invites reassurance, and reassurance is the exact thing that will chain you back to the big version for another eleven years. Somebody will say oh but you must, and you will, and that will be that.

Done silently, it is simply how it was this year. Most people will not notice. The one who notices will probably say nothing.

And you will find out something worth knowing, which is what actually happens when the legend is not fully serviced.

You are running a small honest test rather than making an announcement, and the written word never once measures a work by how it compares with a previous version. Zechariah 4:10 puts the comparison itself in the wrong, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present with a man who has quietly stopped competing with his own past.