When Things Settle Down

She has been saying it for four years and she only noticed last week.

When things settle down. When the move is finished. When her mother is sorted. When the new job stops being new. When the youngest is a bit older. When this quarter is over, when this year is over, when the extension is done.

She said it again on Tuesday, out loud, to a friend, and heard it, and did the arithmetic in the car afterwards: that is four years of a life in which the real thing, the sitting down with God properly, has been permanently scheduled for a slightly later date.

And nothing has gone wrong exactly. She still believes it all. She still prays in the ordinary running way. But there is a specific thing she means, and it has not happened since 2022, and the reason is never rebellion. It is always that this particular fortnight is not the one.

The thought that arrived in the car was the uncomfortable one: there is no version of my life that settles down. I have been waiting for a season that does not exist.

That is your calendar. That is your Tuesday. And I want to speak into it, because Paul has a sentence about timing that closes this whole question in one line.

The tense of it

Paul quotes Isaiah and then does something with it, and what he does is the whole point.

For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.2 Corinthians 6:2

The prophecy was in the past tense and the future. Paul puts behold, now in front of it twice, and drags the whole thing into the present.

Now. Not when the extension is done. Not when your mother is sorted. The accepted time is a tense, not a season, and the word behind accepted carries the sense of favourable, well received, the moment when the door is open.

You have an open door today, in the middle of everything. Not a booking for a quieter month. The written word puts the accepted time in the present and says so twice in one verse, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes that live in a woman doing arithmetic in a car park.

Now let me say something kind about the four years, because you have started to read them as neglect.

They were a move, a mother, a new job and a small child. You did not choose leisure over God. You have been carrying a great deal and doing it well, and there is no version of those four years in which you were idle.

You have not been careless with Him. The written word never treats a loaded life as a lapse. The Holy Spirit has been with you through all of it, and He was not standing in the hall waiting for an appointment.

And now the honest part, which is the sentence from the car.

There is no settled season coming. Something is always live. Even the year the extension finishes will contain something, because that is the nature of a life with people in it.

You are not required to wait for a calm week. Now is the accepted time, and now is Tuesday, with everything unfinished. The Holy Spirit is not scheduling anything for later, and He has never once postponed you.