Before I Read My Daughter's Message

There were two messages waiting on Wednesday morning and Marion opened neither of them first.

One was from her daughter, sent at eleven the night before, and it was the kind that starts with sorry, long one. The other was a photograph from her son of something a grandchild had done. Both were sitting there, both had been there since before she woke, and her thumb went past both of them to the other thing, read the figure, registered that it was fine, and then came back up.

Eight seconds, perhaps. Then she read her daughter's message properly and rang her at half eight and they talked for forty minutes and it was a good conversation.

Nothing went wrong. That is what makes this worth saying carefully. Nobody was neglected, nothing was missed, and if you had watched the whole morning you would have seen a woman who is close to her children and rings them.

But the order was the order, and Marion noticed it that particular morning for a reason she could not explain, and she has not been able to un-notice it since.

She is seventy. She has been a believer since she was nineteen and there is nothing performed about any of it. She prays in that kitchen most mornings, out loud sometimes, and she means every word. Ask her what she trusts and she will tell you God, and she will be telling the truth.

Ask her what gets read first, before the people she loves most, and the answer is a different answer, and she has never put those two answers side by side.

Your version may not be a phone at all. It might be that the figure is the first thing your mind produces when you wake, before you have decided to think about anything. It might be that there is a thing you check that goes ahead of a person, quietly, every day, and nobody in the world would ever see it happen.

Nobody is accusing you of anything. The evidence here is order, which is observable, and it does not require you to confess a motive you may not even have.

Something has been given the first minute.

Nothing has to be wrong for something to be out of order

Let me say the freeing thing first, or you will spend this whole page defending yourself and hear none of it.

Looking is not sin. Knowing what you have is not sin. Being careful with what you are responsible for is not sin, and Scripture never once treats a person who keeps track of their own affairs as somebody of small faith. If you came here braced to be told that carefulness is faithlessness, put that down now. It is not true and this page will not say it.

The question is not whether you look. It is what goes first, and whether you ever chose the order.

There is a psalm about waiting that uses a very physical picture, and the picture is about eyes.

Behold, as the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress; so our eyes wait upon the Lord our God.Psalm 123:2

So our eyes wait upon the Lord our God.

Look at what the image is describing. A servant in that house watched a hand. Not out of fear, and not because something was about to go wrong. It was the ordinary working posture: the hand was where the next thing came from, so the eyes rested there, continually, without being told.

That is a picture about direction rather than duty. It is not saying look harder. It is saying that the eyes settle on whatever a person understands to be the source, and that this happens without any deciding.

You have a place your eyes were made to wait. Not a discipline you must impose on yourself before breakfast. The written word puts the waiting look on the Lord as the natural resting posture of somebody in His house, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a woman standing in a kitchen at seven in the morning.

Now let me say something about the app, because it has done nothing wrong.

It is a tool and it is a good one. Nothing here wants you to delete it, and there is no rule coming about how often is acceptable. The trouble is not that you use it. The trouble is that a tool has quietly been given the first minute, which is the one minute nobody performs in.

You are not being asked to become careless. The written word never rebukes a person for knowing their own situation, and the Holy Spirit is not embarrassed by a woman who keeps track.

And now the part that is not about a screen at all.

The first minute of a morning is where a person's real order shows, because nothing has started yet and there is nobody to be seen by. Eight seconds is nothing. Eight seconds every day for eleven years is a direction.

You are not condemned by an order you never chose. As the eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and the point of that picture is where the source is understood to be. The Holy Spirit has been in that kitchen every one of those mornings and has never thought one hard thing about you.