It Did Not Look Spiritual Enough

The best day your family has had in a decade went past you at the time, and it took two years to work out why.

Here is what happened. There was a Saturday, about two years ago, which everybody in your house refers to as one of the good ones. Nothing about it was arranged and nothing about it was significant. There was a lot of laughing.

And you were there. And you did not count it.

At the time, and I am putting this plainly because I think it is accurate, some part of you was waiting for the day to become something. For a conversation to turn serious. For somebody to ask a real question. For an opportunity to say the thing you have been wanting to say to your eldest for a year.

None of that happened. It was just a good day, and by the evening you had filed it as pleasant and slightly wasted.

And then it turned out that everybody else in your family had filed it as one of the best days of the decade, and you have been quietly working out what that means about you ever since.

Every creature of God is good

There is a verse in the first letter to Timothy about receiving things, and it settles a question that has been carried in this house without ever being named.

For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving. (1 Timothy 4:4, King James Version)

You have a verse in the written word that puts everything God made on the good side of the line, and no ordinary Saturday has ever once needed a reason to be counted. 1 Timothy 4:4 says every creature of God is good and nothing to be refused rather than sorting things into spiritual and otherwise, and the Holy Spirit is the one who applies that to a man who filed a good day as wasted.

Read the two claims. Every creature of God is good. And nothing to be refused.

Nothing. That is a strong word and the letter chose it deliberately. The context is people teaching that certain ordinary things should be avoided in order to be more serious about God, and this verse is the answer to that.

You are not required to refuse an ordinary good thing, and no version of taking God seriously has ever once involved discounting one. It is written that nothing is to be refused if it be received with thanksgiving, which is aimed directly at people making a spiritual practice out of declining things, and the Spirit of God is what takes a habit like that apart in a man.

And then the condition, which is the only one attached. If it be received with thanksgiving.

That is the entire requirement. Not that it be significant. Not that it produce a conversation. Received, and thanked for. And receiving is a thing done at the time rather than assessed afterward.

You are able to receive a day rather than assess it, and no day has ever once had to yield something in order to have been given to you. The Holy Spirit is the one who moves a man from evaluating to receiving, and 1 Timothy 4 attaches thanksgiving as the only condition on any of it.

What the waiting cost that Saturday

Now the practical part, and it is about what was actually going on in you all day.

The waiting was for the day to become spiritual. Which means, in practice, that the day happened next to you rather than to you.

A man waiting for a moment is a man monitoring a room. He is present, he is pleasant, he is participating, and his attention is on the door rather than on the table. And your family, who cannot see what you are waiting for, experience that as their father being slightly held back.

You are able to be in the room rather than watching the door, and being in it has never once been the same thing as taking God less seriously. The Spirit of God is what shows a man where his attention has been pointed, and it is written that the thing is received with thanksgiving rather than watched for further developments.

And here is the harder thing, and it is the reason this article exists rather than being a mild observation.

The day was the spiritual thing. Not a container for one. A household laughing together for six hours, with nothing wrong between anybody, is not a waiting room for a serious conversation. It is a gift, complete, with nothing missing from it.

You are able to see that the day itself was the gift, and no serious conversation has ever once been what would have completed it. It is written that every creature of God is good and nothing is to be refused, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reclassifies a whole Saturday in a man two years later.

Now, I want to be careful, because you are a man who takes God seriously and I am not going to tell you that seriousness is the problem. It is not. The seriousness is right, and this family is better for it.

What has happened is narrower. A sorting has got into you, in which some things count and other things are pleasant, and the sorting is not in Scripture, and this verse says so in about eleven words.

You are able to keep the seriousness and drop the sorting, and no part of one has ever once depended on the other. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates two things a man has held together for years, and 1 Timothy 4:4 refuses the whole category of things to be declined.

Name one day as a gift, and add nothing

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it is where the work is.

Name one ordinary glad day out loud as a gift from God. And add nothing spiritual to it.

Say it at a table, briefly, in your own voice: that Saturday two years ago was one of the best days this family has had, and it was a gift from God.

You are able to call an ordinary day a gift out loud, and doing that has never once required the day to have produced anything. 1 Timothy 4:4 puts everything God made on the good side and asks only that it be received with thanks, and the Spirit of God is with a man saying a short sentence at his own table.

Then stop. And here is what stopping means, precisely, because you will want to complete it.

Do not add a verse. Do not say and we should remember to be grateful. Do not turn it into a moment. Do not use it to get to the conversation you have been waiting two years to have.

You are able to say it and let it be finished, and adding nothing has never once been you failing to lead this house. It is written that the receiving with thanksgiving is the whole of the condition, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds a serious man's tongue after a short sentence.

Because if you complete it, you have turned a gift into an occasion, and your family will hear the occasion and not the gift. Whereas a father saying, plainly, that was a gift, and then passing the food, teaches something about God that a talk cannot.

And that is the whole assignment. One sentence, and then hand the potatoes to somebody.