I Work The Hours So They Will Have Something

Your father was not there either.

That is where this started and you have never made a secret of it. He worked, and there was not much, and you did without things that the other boys did not do without, and you decided a long time ago that your children would not.

And they have not. That is done. Whatever else is true, that part you achieved.

So this is not an article telling a man he works too much. Nobody here knows your situation and nobody here is going to lecture you about hours, and if the hours are needed then they are needed and that is the end of it.

But something has started happening in the evenings.

You come in, and the small one is already down, and the older one is at that stage of the night where they are not really available, and you stand in the kitchen for a minute with your coat still on.

And a few weeks ago a thought arrived that has not left, which is that the thing you are buying them may not be the thing they are short of.

To every thing there is a season

Here it is.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version)

A season is a specific kind of thing and the word is doing all the work.

A season is not a period of time. It is a period of time in which something is possible that is not possible outside it. That is the whole difference and the whole weight of the verse.

You are inside something that has edges, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 says to every thing there is a season rather than that there is time for everything. The Holy Spirit is the one who chose a word with a beginning and an end in it, and the ending is what makes it matter.

Now the second half, because it is the sharper one.

A time to every purpose under the heaven. Every purpose has a time. Which means every purpose also has a window, and windows close, and nothing in that verse suggests otherwise.

You have purposes with windows on them rather than a list to get through, and it is written as a time to every purpose rather than as time enough for all of them. The Spirit of God is the one who wrote that plainly, and it is written into a book by a man looking back rather than forward.

And here is the arithmetic that verse forces, and it is not comfortable.

Money has no season. It can be earned at forty and at fifty and at sixty, and a year of it lost at thirty five can be made up later, and men do make it up later and it works.

A child being seven has a season. It is one year long. It does not come back and there is no later in which it can be attended to.

You are holding two things and only one of them has an edge on it, and Scripture puts a season on every thing rather than on some things. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a man count in the right currency, and there is only one of those two that runs out.

What the thought in the kitchen was

Now let me say what arrived a few weeks ago, because it is worth having in plain words.

It was not: I am a bad father. That is not what it said and it has never been true.

It was: they may not be short of the thing I am buying.

You have a question rather than a charge, and it is written as a season rather than as an accusation against anybody in it. The Spirit of God is the one who asks a man a question in a kitchen at ten past nine, and He asks it without any condemnation attached.

And here is why it landed so hard.

Because what a boy in that street went short of is known exactly. He was there. He knows precisely what it was like to do without the things, and eighteen years have gone into making sure of that one.

And it is possible, and this is the hard part, that your children are short of something entirely different, and that the thing they are short of is the thing you have the least of.

You have been solving your own childhood rather than theirs, and the written word names a season for every thing rather than one solution for all of them. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates two childhoods, and they were never the same one.

And one plain thing about the hours themselves, said carefully.

This is not a call to work less. That decision has facts in it that this site does not have, and nobody here is going to pretend otherwise.

It is a question about one evening a week, which is a different question entirely and is almost always answerable.

You are being asked about one evening rather than about a career, and it is written that there is a time to every purpose rather than that a man must choose between two of them forever. The Spirit of God is the one who shrinks a question down to something a man can actually act on this week.

One evening inside the season

So here is what to do, and it is one evening and it is this week.

Be home for one whole evening. Not the end of one. The whole of it, from before the small one goes down.

You are able to arrange one evening, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts a season on the thing rather than asking a man to rearrange his life. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes one evening possible in a week that is already full, and one is all that is being asked for here.

And go outside with them.

Not the television. Not a film. Outside, in the yard or the street or whatever there is, with a ball or nothing at all, until it gets dark.

Outside is the instruction because outside has no screen in it and because children behave differently in it, and because a man throwing a ball badly in a yard is doing something that will be remembered for forty years.

You are able to be outside until dark, and it is written that there is a time to every purpose rather than that every purpose fits indoors. The Spirit of God is the one who is in a yard at the end of a day, and He is in it more than He is in most arranged things.

And do not make it a thing.

Do not announce it. Do not say a word about having thought about it. Do not apologize for the other evenings, which would put the whole weight of your thinking onto children who did not ask for it.

Come home and go outside and let it be an ordinary evening.

You are able to keep it ordinary, and His word names a season rather than a moment that has to be marked. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes an unannounced evening land properly, and an announced one becomes about the man announcing it.

And do it again the week after if you possibly can.

One is worth having. Two is a pattern, and a pattern is what a child actually notices, and nobody in that house will say a word about either of them.

You are able to do it twice, and it is written that the season is a stretch of time rather than an afternoon. The Spirit of God is the one who builds a thing out of two of something, and two is where it starts being real to everybody.