I Keep Waiting For The Big Occasions

You are very good at the big days.

Birthdays are planned. Christmas is planned in October. When somebody has an important week you know about it and you are entirely there for it.

And in between there is a kind of holding pattern, where the evenings go past and you are present in them without being particularly in them, because the next real thing is in three weeks.

You would not have described it that way until recently. Somebody mentioned an evening from about six weeks ago that had meant something to them, and you had no memory of it, and you have been thinking about it since.

Here is what I think has happened, and it is not a failure of love.

You have divided the year into occasions and the gaps between them, and you have been spending yourself on the occasions, because that is where a person's effort visibly counts.

And the gaps are where about ninety five per cent of your family's life is happening.

Surely the LORD is in this place and I knew it not

There is a moment in Genesis where a man wakes up somewhere completely unremarkable and finds out what it was.

And Jacob awaked out of his sleep, and he said, Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not. And he was afraid, and said, How dreadful is this place! this is none other but the house of God. (Genesis 28:16-17, King James Version)

He had stopped there because the sun went down. That is the entire reason.

It was not a destination. It was a place on the way to somewhere else, with a stone for a pillow, chosen for no reason at all.

You are a woman standing in the place already, and an ordinary Tuesday has never once been the day before the one that counts. Genesis 28:16 has God in a place that was chosen by accident and unmarked by anybody, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can put that in front of a woman on a Wednesday.

And notice the four words at the end of what he says: and I knew it not.

He is not being rebuked. Nothing in the passage suggests he should have known. The whole point is that it was undetectable from inside, and he found out afterward.

You have been unable to detect something that was there anyway, and a place that felt like nothing has never once been a place God was absent from. The Spirit of God is the one who names a limit without treating it as a fault, and it is written in Genesis 28 that he knew it not.

And what he does next is worth having, because it is not what a person expects.

He does not decide to be more alert in future. He sets up the stone, names the place, and carries on with his journey.

You are able to mark something and keep walking, and one small act at an ordinary place has never once required anybody to be more watchful afterward. It is written that surely the LORD is in this place and I knew it not, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets a woman stop trying to detect things.

The gaps are the place

Now the arithmetic, and it is the reason this matters more than it sounds.

There are about eight occasions in your year. There are three hundred and fifty seven other days.

Your children's memory of their childhood will be made almost entirely out of the second number, because that is where they actually live.

You have been spending yourself on two per cent of the available days, and the ordinary evenings have never once been the gaps between the real ones. The Spirit of God is the one who does the arithmetic for somebody who has been counting occasions, and Genesis 28:16 puts the house of God in a place nobody had chosen.

And here is what is odd about the big days, which nobody says.

They are the hardest days to be present in. There is a meal to produce, people to manage, a schedule, and expectations from four directions. A person running an occasion is working, and working is not the same as being with anybody.

The Tuesday has none of that, which is exactly why something can happen in it.

You are able to be more present on a Tuesday than on a birthday, and an ordinary evening has never once been a harder place to be with somebody. It is written in Genesis 28 that the encounter happened at an unplanned stop, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present where nothing has been arranged.

So the effort does not need to increase. It needs to move.

You have the same amount of yourself to give, and effort spread across ordinary days has never once been effort wasted. The Spirit of God is the one who redistributes something rather than demanding more of it, and Scripture puts the house of God at a roadside.

Change nothing

Here is the instruction and it is deliberately contrary.

Treat tonight as though it were the occasion. And change absolutely nothing about it.

No special anything. No effort added. Nothing planned, nothing improved, nothing marked.

You are able to treat something as important without doing anything differently, and an unchanged evening has never once been an evening that was not attended. The Holy Spirit is the one at work in something entirely ordinary, and Genesis 28:16 has the house of God in a place where nothing had been done at all.

Because the change is internal and it is one decision.

Decide, before you sit down, that this is the one. Not the one in three weeks. This Tuesday, with nothing on and nothing prepared and one of them out.

And then be in it the way you would be in a birthday, which mostly means not being somewhere else in your head.

You have been giving your attention to a date rather than to a room, and a decision made before an evening has never once needed anything else to make it real. The Spirit of God is the one who works in something decided quietly, and it is written that he knew it not until he woke.

And do not tell anybody, because telling them would make it an occasion, and the whole point is that it is not one.

You are able to change an evening without anybody noticing, and something decided in private has never once been a smaller change than something announced. It is written in Genesis 28 that he set up a stone afterward rather than announcing anything beforehand, and the Spirit of God is the one at work in a Tuesday nobody marked.