I Nearly Called It Off That Afternoon

You had your phone in your hand and you were about four words into the message.

Something has come up. Or, I think we might leave it this week. Or, honestly, just: not today. And then something interrupted you, and you did not send it, and you went.

And that afternoon is now the day your family talks about.

They bring it up. Somebody mentioned it two weeks ago at a table. Your youngest has told two other people about it. And you sit there while it gets told and you have never once said the thing you are actually thinking, which is: I nearly called it off.

That is what I want to talk about, because it is not gratitude that you feel. It is something closer to being unsettled. You have found out that the best afternoon of the last two years was four words away from not existing, and it did not survive because of anything you decided.

Let me put a passage next to that, and then let me tell you what it means for the next afternoon you do not feel like.

Abide with us: for it is toward evening

There is a moment on the road to Emmaus where two people nearly let something end, and the whole rest of that afternoon exists because of one sentence.

But they constrained him, saying, Abide with us: for it is toward evening, and the day is far spent. And he went in to tarry with them. (Luke 24:29, King James Version)

You have a scene in the written word where the best part of a day happened because somebody said one sentence at the last possible moment, and no afternoon has ever once been too far gone for that. Luke 24:29 has the whole evening turn on a single request rather than on a plan, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that specific to a woman with an unsent message on her phone.

Look at what nearly happened. He was going further. That is what the verse before says. The default outcome of that afternoon was that the two of them arrived, He carried on, and nothing else happened.

And what changed it was not a revelation. It was a practical sentence about the time of day. It is toward evening, and the day is far spent. Stay.

You are able to change an afternoon with one ordinary sentence, and it has never once required you to know what is on the other side of it. It is written that they constrained him saying abide with us, for it is toward evening, which is a sentence about the light rather than about anything spiritual, and the Spirit of God is what puts an ordinary request into somebody's mouth at the last moment.

And read what happens after. He goes in, He breaks bread, and they recognize Him. The entire recognition, the whole point of that chapter, happens inside a stretch of time that nearly did not occur.

You are able to receive something inside time you nearly did not spend, and no part of it has once depended on you having known what it would hold. The Holy Spirit is the one who fills a stretch of an afternoon that was almost given up, and Luke 24 has the recognition happen after the invitation rather than before it.

Appetite is not a forecast

Now the practical part, and it is the piece worth keeping.

The reason it nearly got called off was not laziness and it was not a bad reason. My guess is there was no appetite for it. Tiredness, the light going, and a lot of effort in prospect for something that would probably be fine at best.

That feeling is real, and here is the useful discovery you accidentally made: it was not a forecast.

You are able to hold the tiredness and go anyway, and no lack of appetite has ever once been able to tell you what an afternoon would contain. The Spirit of God is what shows a person the difference between a feeling and a prediction, and it is written that the day was far spent when the best part of it began.

That is not a small thing to have found out, and it is the only actual lesson available from what happened. Not that you should have been more enthusiastic. That your enthusiasm, or lack of it, has no predictive power whatsoever about how a day goes.

And here is the reason it has none. What makes an afternoon good has almost nothing to do with the mood you set out in. It has to do with what happens once everybody is there, and what happens once everybody is there is not something you bring with you.

You are not the person who has to supply what makes an afternoon good, and no amount of arriving tired has once been able to spoil it in advance. It is written that He went in to tarry with them, which is somebody else arriving into the time they made available, and the Holy Spirit is the one who fills a space a tired woman decided to keep open.

Now, the thing to be careful of, because it would be easy to turn this into a rule that grinds you down. This is not: go every time regardless of how you feel, forever. That is a recipe for exhaustion and it is not what happened.

It is narrower. Once, this week, go on an afternoon with no appetite for it at all, and find out again what got found out by accident.

Go this week without waiting to want to

So here is the assignment.

Go this week on an afternoon you do not feel like. And go without waiting to want to.

Pick something small and near, so that the going costs almost nothing. Then, when the feeling arrives, and it will arrive about an hour before, go anyway.

You are able to move before the feeling changes, and no part of that has ever once required you to talk yourself into anything. Luke 24:29 has the request made while the day was far spent, and the Spirit of God is with a woman putting her shoes on without any enthusiasm at all.

And here is how, practically, because willpower is not the mechanism. Do not argue with the reluctance. Do not tell yourself it will be worth it, because you do not know that and it is the kind of promise that stops working after it fails once.

Say the true version instead: I do not feel like this and we are going anyway. Both halves, out loud if it helps.

You are able to say both halves of that at once, and admitting the reluctance has never once made the going less likely. It is written that they constrained him with a plain practical sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present when a person moves without waiting for their mood to catch up.

Then let the afternoon be whatever it is. It may be unremarkable. That is a completely acceptable outcome, and it does not touch anything in this article, because the point was never that going always produces a good day.

The point is that the four words you nearly sent are not qualified to make that decision.