The Ones We Remember Are Never The Expensive Ones

Ask your family what their best day was and they will name a Tuesday you had almost nothing to do with.

Mine says the afternoon we walked to the bridge because the car would not start. Somebody else's says the evening the power went out. Ask around any family and it is always something like that, and almost never the week that cost four months of saving.

Now, I want to be careful, because there is a version of this article that is worthless and I have read it many times. It goes: the best things in life are free, and it is written by somebody who is not tired and does not have a real number in their bank account, and it lands on a mother like an instruction to be grateful.

That is not what this is.

Here is the actual claim, and it is narrower and more useful. It is not that cheap days are better. It is that the thing which makes a day memorable is a specific ingredient, and that ingredient has nothing to do with money, and you have been waiting for a day that has it rather than putting it into the one you are standing in.

This is the day which the LORD hath made

There is a line in the hundred and eighteenth Psalm that everybody knows, and there is one word in it that almost nobody notices.

This is the day which the LORD hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it. (Psalm 118:24, King James Version)

You have a day in front of you that the written word calls made rather than accidental, and no ordinary Tuesday has ever once been outside that description. Psalm 118:24 says this is the day rather than a day or one day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a demonstrative pronoun land on an actual afternoon.

This. That is the word. Not a day. Not one day. This one, the one currently in progress, the specific and unremarkable one you are standing in while you read this.

And that word is doing something you can feel if you say the verse with the emphasis in the right place. It is pointing.

You are standing in the day the written word is pointing at, and no better one has ever once been what the verse meant. It is written this is the day which the LORD hath made, with the demonstrative doing the work, which is why the verse cannot be applied to a future Saturday, and the Spirit of God is what puts a person into the day they are actually in.

And then the second half, which is the part that has a decision in it. We will rejoice and be glad in it.

Not: we will feel glad if it turns out well. It is a stated intention about a day whose contents are not yet known, made in advance, about this one.

You are able to decide in advance about a day whose contents you do not know, and doing that has never once been you pretending anything about it. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes that a real decision rather than an attitude, and Psalm 118 has the rejoicing declared over a day rather than reported after it.

What the ingredient actually is

Now the practical part, and this is where I want to be specific rather than warm, because warm is easy and specific is useful.

Think about the day your family names. Mine is the bridge. Yours is something like it. And ask what those days have in common, because it is not simplicity and it is not the absence of money.

Here is what they have in common, in every single case I have ever asked about. Nobody was managing it.

There was no plan to protect. Nothing had been paid for. No expectation was being measured against. Which meant that every adult present was actually available, and children can tell the difference between an available adult and a supervising one from about forty feet.

You have the ingredient in your own hands, and it has never once been for sale at any price. The Spirit of God is what makes a person available rather than busy, and it is written that the gladness is declared over this day rather than earned by a good one.

And that is why the expensive days do not win. Not because money is bad. Because money creates a plan, and a plan creates a manager, and the manager is you, and you are then unavailable for the entire duration of the thing you paid for.

The cheap Tuesday had no manager because there was nothing to manage.

You are able to be available in a day you also arranged, and the two have never once been strictly incompatible. It is written that the day is one the LORD hath made, which puts the making somewhere other than in your hands, and the Holy Spirit is the one who releases a woman from having to produce the day she is standing in.

So the practical question is not how to have more cheap days. It is how to be unmanaging in one, on purpose. And the way to do that is to take the plan out, which is why the assignment is what it is.

Two hours, free, and nothing arranged

So here is the assignment, and every part of it is chosen.

Take the family somewhere free this week and stay two hours.

Free, because free means nothing has been paid for, and nothing paid for means nothing to protect. That is the whole reason it is free, and it is not about the money.

You are able to remove the plan rather than the money, and taking the cost out has never once been the point of it. Psalm 118:24 declares the gladness over the day rather than over its arrangements, and the Spirit of God is with a woman choosing a place with nothing in it.

Two hours, because two hours has no shape. An hour is a visit. Four hours needs a plan. Two hours is long enough for everybody to get bored once, which is when the thing you are hoping for happens.

And nothing arranged. Do not decide what you are doing there. Do not bring anything designed to occupy anybody. Go, and be there, and let it be slightly boring in the middle.

You are able to let two hours be shapeless, and nothing about that has ever once been you failing to make a day nice for anybody. It is written we will rejoice and be glad in it, declared over a day rather than after assessing one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an unmanaged hour.

And one more thing, which is the only instruction about you rather than about the arrangements. Do not photograph it for the first hour.

Not as a rule about phones. Because a camera makes you the person watching for something worth keeping, which is a job, and jobs make people unavailable.