The Same Forty Minutes Every Day

It starts before you are properly awake and it is the same every single time.

The same three requests. The same shoe. The same person who cannot find the thing that was in their hand ninety seconds ago. The same sentence out of your own mouth, which you have now said several thousand times and which has never once worked.

And you are tired of it before it begins. That is the actual complaint and it is worth being honest about, because it is not tiredness from the morning. It is tiredness from the number of mornings, and from knowing exactly how tomorrow's will go.

I am not going to hand you a routine. Not a system, not a checklist the night before, not a way of making it smoother. There is a whole industry doing that and you have tried some of it, and none of it addresses the actual thing, which is not efficiency.

And I am not going to tell you to treasure it. You have had that from your mother, from a woman in a shop, and from about four internet posts, and every time it lands it makes the morning slightly worse, because now on top of being worn out you are also failing to appreciate something.

They are new every morning

There is half a verse in Lamentations that everybody knows, and I want to point at one word in it that gets skipped.

It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23, King James Version)

New every morning.

New. Not renewed, not topped up, not the same supply continuing. New, which means what arrives on Tuesday is not what was left over from Monday.

And look at where it sits. Lamentations is a book about a city that has been destroyed, written by somebody in the middle of genuine catastrophe, and this line is not a cheerful thought dropped in. It is the one thing he can find to stand on when everything repeats and nothing improves.

Which means the promise is not aimed at good mornings. It is aimed at somebody who is looking at another identical day of it.

Lamentations 3:23 supplies something new into a day that is the same as the last one, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that reach a parent at ten past seven.

You are given something new for this morning, and it has never once been yesterday's supply carried over. Lamentations 3:23 says they are new every morning, written by a man in the middle of a catastrophe that repeated, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings it into a hallway rather than into a quiet time.

Sameness is not the problem

Now the thing that is actually wearing you, because it is not the repetition.

Small children need repetition. The sameness is doing something for them; it is the reason they can predict their own life, and a home that runs the same way every morning is a gift they will not be able to describe until they are about thirty.

What is wearing you is that you are doing all forty minutes at the same speed, which is fast, and against the clock, and with a running commentary in your head about how it is going.

Lamentations 3:23 hands out something for the day rather than a method for it, and the Holy Spirit is not asking you to redesign a single thing about your morning.

The morning does not need to change. One part of it can be done differently, and that is a much smaller thing than the one you have been told to do.

You are not doing the morning wrong, and the sameness of it has never once been the thing wearing you through. The written word supplies a fresh mercy into a repeated day without redesigning the day, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes the redesign off a person who does not have time for one.

One part, slowly, and one kind sentence

So here is the assignment. It is two small things inside a morning you are not changing. Lamentations 3:23 puts something new into the same day rather than a new day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who works at that scale.

Do one part of it slowly on purpose. One part. Not the whole thing, which is impossible, and not the part with the door and the clock in it. Pick something small: the shoes, or the two minutes at the table, or the coat.

Slowly on purpose means you decide in advance which part it is, tonight, before you are inside the morning and unable to decide anything. Lamentations 3:23 has the mercy waiting at the start rather than arriving mid-scramble, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is in a decision made the night before.

And say one kind sentence in it. Not praise for anything, not a reward. Something warm that is not instruction: I like your hair like that. You were funny last night. I am glad you are coming home after school.

That is the whole assignment, because in a fast forty minutes almost everything a parent says is an instruction, and a child can go a whole week hearing nothing from you that is not a direction.

Lamentations 3:23 puts something new inside the same day rather than replacing the day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in one kind sentence in a hallway at ten past seven.

You are able to slow one part and say one warm thing, and it has never once required the whole morning to change. Lamentations 3:23 gives a fresh mercy into a repeating day, and the Spirit of God is the one who is in a sentence that is not an instruction.