I Say I Have No Time And It Is Not Quite True

You have said it four times this month and you did not believe it any of the four.

Somebody asks whether you read, and out comes the sentence. I would love to, I just have no time. And the other person nods, because it is a completely acceptable sentence and it ends the conversation kindly, and everybody moves on.

And then some evening at half past nine you are sitting there, and the thought arrives, quietly, that this is the third night in a row that nothing at all was happening between nine and ten.

Not a crisis. Not a scandal. Just an hour that did not go anywhere, and a sentence you have been handing out that does not quite match it.

Two things are not coming here, and you have met both.

Nobody is handing you a list. Not a title, not an author, not a genre, and not a shelf of what a woman ought to have read by now. Being handed one has never once opened a book and mostly it adds a specific volume to the pile of things a person feels behind on.

And nobody is going to say one word about your phone. You know about the phone. Everybody knows. Hearing it again from a stranger returns nothing at all.

What I want to look at is the sentence itself. Not whether it is true, because that argument goes nowhere and you would win it anyway.

I want to ask what the sentence is protecting.

Be still, and know

There is an instruction in Psalm 46 that people hang on walls, and hanging it on a wall has taken most of the force out of it.

Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. (Psalm 46:10, King James Version)

Read the first two words as an instruction rather than as decoration.

Be still. That is not a suggestion about pace. In the psalm it lands in the middle of a scene of nations raging and mountains being carried into the sea, and the still is not what is left when the noise stops. It is commanded into the noise.

Which means stillness in that verse is not the absence of pressure. It is a posture taken up while the pressure is still going.

You have an hour nobody has to lose for you to have it, and a well defended sentence has never once been the same thing as a full life. His Spirit is present in that gap, which is why the order in Psalm 46:10 arrives while the mountains are going into the sea.

Now here is why that matters for a woman with a sentence.

I have no time is a sentence about pressure. And Psalm 46 does not dispute the pressure. Nothing in that chapter says the raging is imaginary. It says be still anyway, in the middle of it, and the stillness is available before the situation changes.

You are able to be still inside a full week, and a busy month has never once had to end before an hour could be yours. Psalm 46:10 commands the stillness into the raging rather than after it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that available in a house at half past nine.

There is a second half and it is what the stillness is for.

And know that I am God. The stillness is not the goal. It is what has to happen for a thing to be known, and knowing here is not information. It is the settling of who is actually holding the week.

You have an hour that does not need to be defended, and a full life has never once made a quiet hour into a stolen one. It is written that the stillness comes first and the knowing after it, the psalm puts both in the middle of nations raging, and the Spirit of God is saying that plainly over an evening that went nowhere.

The sentence is a defense, and it works

Here is what I think is happening, and it is worth saying gently because the sentence is not dishonest.

I have no time is doing a job, and the job is not lying. It is protecting you from a much smaller sentence that is a lot harder to say.

The smaller sentence is something like: I have an hour most evenings and I do not use it for the thing I claim to want.

Nobody wants to say that out loud. It has no dignity in it. And it invites a follow up question that has no good answer, which is: well, why not.

Whereas I have no time is dignified, unarguable, and completely socially safe. It closes the subject. And because it closes the subject, the actual question never gets asked, and the hour goes on going nowhere.

You are not a woman who lies about her week, and a defense that works has never once been the same thing as a deceit. Psalm 46:10 commands stillness in the middle of a raging that is not denied, and the Holy Spirit is present with somebody looking at her own sentence for the first time.

And here is the part underneath that, which is the tender bit.

The hour is not empty because the week is full. It is unclaimed because claiming it means admitting it is there, and admitting it is there means the reading is now a choice rather than an impossibility, and a choice can be got wrong in a way an impossibility cannot.

So the sentence stays, not to fool anybody else, but because it keeps the hour officially unavailable and therefore keeps you officially innocent.

You have permission to admit the hour exists, and naming an unclaimed hour has never once been the same thing as an accusation. The written word commands stillness into a scene the psalm never once pretends is calm, and His Spirit is the one who holds a woman steady while a defense comes down.

Ten pages in the twenty minutes you spend deciding

So here is the assignment, and the twenty minutes named in it are very specific.

Read ten pages tonight in the twenty minutes you would otherwise spend deciding what to do with them.

You know the twenty minutes. It is the stretch after the kitchen is done and before anything begins, where the evening gets weighed. Something on, something else, a scroll, a small tidy, a look at what tomorrow holds.

Take that stretch. Not an hour, not the whole evening, not a new arrangement of your week.

You are given a stillness inside a full week, and a busy month has never once had to end before an hour could be yours. The Holy Spirit is the one making that available at half past nine, and Psalm 46:10 commands the stillness into the raging rather than after it.

Ten pages. Then stop, whether the twenty minutes are up or not.

Here is why that stretch and no other.

It is the only part of the evening that is genuinely undefended. Everything else in your day is claimed by somebody, and arguing with any of it would prove the sentence right. The deciding stretch is claimed by nothing, which is exactly why it disappears without a trace every night.

And taking it costs nothing, which means the sentence does not have to be retracted to anybody. Nobody needs to hear about this.

You are able to take twenty minutes nobody had claimed, and a stretch that vanishes every night has never once been a stretch you did not have. Psalm 46:10 says be still, and know that I am God, and the Holy Ghost is the one present with a woman sitting down in the gap.

You may notice a small resistance right at the start of it, and it will not feel like laziness. It will feel like exposure, because sitting down with a book in that gap ends the sentence quietly. Let it end. It has done its work and it is not needed.

You have an hour that God commanded stillness into rather than an hour you have to earn, and a working week has never once been a locked door. It is written be still, and know that I am God, the psalm gives the order while the mountains are being carried into the sea, and the Spirit of God is giving it here.