It Is Over And The House Is Quiet

Everybody has gone and there is a chair pushed out from the table.

You are standing in the kitchen and the kettle is on and there is nothing that has to happen today. And you feel strange, and you have no name for it, and you are slightly alarmed by it because the day went perfectly well.

I want to name the thing, because almost nobody writes about this and it catches people every year.

For weeks, everything in you was pointed at a date. Every decision led there. The shopping, the arrangements, the bracing, the money, the dread if you had dread, and the hoping if you had hoping. All of it aimed at one day.

And then the day happened, and it is behind you, and everything you were leaning against is not there any more.

That is what you are feeling. It is not sadness about the day. It is the sensation of leaning on something that has been removed, and it is physical, and it happens to almost everybody and nobody mentions it.

And there is a second thing underneath, for some of you. On the day itself you were performing: hosting, managing, being pleasant to somebody difficult, holding it together. That takes something out of a person, and the bill for it does not arrive until the day after, when there is nothing left to hold together and it all lands at once.

He lay and slept under a juniper tree

There is a moment in the prophets that is one of the truest descriptions of an afterwards in the whole Bible.

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life. (1 Kings 19:4, King James Version)

He came and sat down under a juniper tree.

Look at where this is. Elijah has just come off the biggest day of his life. Fire fell in front of everybody, the whole crowd went face down, the thing he had prayed for happened in public and it worked.

And this is the next chapter.

Not a failure. Not a defeat. He is not sitting under that tree because it went badly, he is sitting there because it went well and it is over and there was nothing left in him afterwards.

You are looking at the day after described in Scripture rather than at a fault in yourself, and a prophet flat under a tree has never once been a story about a man who failed. First Kings 19:4 reports the emptiness following the greatest day of a life without one word of correction, and the Spirit of God is the one who is under that tree with him.

That is the day after, described in scripture, about the most successful day in a man's career. And nobody in that passage tells him he is being ungrateful, and nobody points out that he should be pleased about what happened yesterday.

It is simply reported as the thing that happens to a person after a day that took everything they had.

You are experiencing what happens after a day that took everything, and it has never once been a verdict on how the day went. First Kings 19:4 puts a man under a tree with nothing left immediately after the greatest success of his life, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that recognizable rather than shameful.

What not to do with today

Here is the practical part, and most of it is what to leave alone.

Do not audit the day today.

You will want to. The mind reaches for it the moment there is quiet: whether it was worth it, whether anybody enjoyed it, what somebody meant by that remark at four o'clock, whether the money was well spent, whether it was better or worse than last year.

You are running on nothing and a tired mind grades hard, and an answer reached today has never once been the true one. First Kings 19:4 has a man ask for his own death at the end of the biggest day of his life and God does not answer the question at all, and the Holy Spirit is the one who postpones a verdict rather than improving it.

Every one of those questions will get a worse answer today than it would get in a week, because a tired mind grades hard. Any assessment made in this particular quiet will be too harsh, and it will feel accurate, which is what makes it dangerous.

The day is over. It does not require a verdict, and if it turns out to need one, that can wait until after some proper sleep and something to eat that is not left over.

And do not schedule anything to fill the gap either. The instinct to put something in the hole is strong and it usually produces a commitment you regret by Thursday.

You are not required to assess anything today, and a tired mind has never once graded fairly. The written word reports the collapse after the triumph without asking the man to evaluate his own success, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person leave the accounting alone.

One ordinary dull thing

So here is the last assignment on this site, and it is deliberately unimpressive.

Do one ordinary, small, dull thing today on purpose.

Wash up one thing by hand. Put out the bins. Walk to the end of the road. Fold something. Make a proper cup of tea and drink it while it is hot.

Not to be productive, and not to get on top of anything. The point is that after weeks of everything meaning something, you need one act that means nothing at all, done at ordinary speed, that is not part of any occasion.

You are able to do one small dull thing and have that be the whole of today, and it has never once been required that a morning produce anything. First Kings 19 has bread and sleep handed to a man before one word of conversation, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is with somebody walking to the end of a road for no reason at all.

That is what returns a person to normal life: not rest exactly, and not achievement. A small dull ordinary act with no significance attached to it.

And notice what happened to Elijah under that tree, because it is the same shape. He was not given a plan or a talking to. He was given sleep, and then food, and then sleep again, and only much later a conversation.

First Kings 19:4 leaves the man under the tree with no correction and no instruction, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in one small ordinary act on a flat afternoon.

You are able to do one dull thing on purpose, and it has never once needed to mean anything to be exactly what today required. First Kings 19:4 has heaven answer an emptied man with rest and food rather than with a lesson, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in the kitchen with you.