The First Hour Is All She Has

Maeve bought the notebook for this. That is the part that gets her.

It is a good one, hardback, the kind with a ribbon sewn into the spine, and she bought it on the Tuesday with the specific thought that when she finally sat down properly and gave the thing an hour of proper attention, she would want somewhere proper to write it. She even put the pen in the loop. She is not a person who buys a notebook lightly.

It is twenty to six. She is on the window seat with the blanket over her feet, and the notebook is open on her knees, and it is blank.

Outside, the roofs across the road have gone from gray to a sort of dirty rose, and the light is doing the thing it does at this hour where it comes in almost flat and lies along the sill and makes the ring on the wood from an old glass look like it was put there on purpose.

On the table by the door there is an envelope from the agent. On Thursday at eleven there is an appointment. Between here and Thursday there is a decision that Maeve has been carrying around the house for eleven days the way you carry a full cup up a staircase.

She was so sure that the mornings were the problem. That if she stopped trying to think about it at half past nine at night with her eyes closing, and instead got up early, sat somewhere lovely, put the light on the page and gave it a clean hour before the day started, it would come.

So here she is. Window seat. Blanket. Notebook. First light on the sill. Twenty to six.

And nothing. Not confusion, which she could work with. Nothing. The place where the thinking normally happens has been switched off at the wall.

She writes the date at the top of the page, because it is something a hand can do, and looks at it.

Somewhere below in the apartments a shower starts running. A gull goes over. The tea she made is going cold on the ledge beside her and she has not touched it and knows she is not going to.

And the thought that has been waiting quietly for her to sit down finally arrives, and it is not about the house at all.

It is: I used to be able to do this.

She used to be the one who worked things out. Sat down, thought it through, got to the end of it, and got up knowing. And now here she is with a good notebook and the best hour of the day and a head like a room with the furniture taken out, and if she cannot do this anymore, then what exactly is she now.

Twenty to six. Fifty minutes before the day starts asking her for things. And she is looking at a blank page, and the light keeps coming up regardless, warm on the back of her hand.

The morning has its own portion

There is a prayer in the psalms that was written by somebody at exactly this hour, and the thing he asks for is not the thing you would expect.

Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee.Psalm 143:8

He does not ask for the answer. Read it again if that goes past. He is in trouble, the psalm around this line is somebody at the end of himself, and what he asks for in the morning is to hear kindness.

Not clarity. Not the plan. Not to be shown how the whole thing resolves so he can stop carrying it. He asks for the sound of God's kindness, in the morning, at the front of a day he has not got the resources for.

You are given a morning's worth of kindness, and it is not being held back until you produce an answer. That is not my sympathy for your Thursday, it is what Psalm 143:8 actually asks for and actually receives, and the Holy Spirit is the One who makes an ancient morning prayer arrive on a window seat with a blanket on it.

And notice what he does ask about the road. Cause me to know the way wherein I should walk. The way he should walk. Not the map. Not Thursday, not the year, not what happens to the house or to any of it. The step. The bit of road under the foot.

You have this hour, and the hour was never required to contain the decision. The written word hands out a step at a time on purpose, and the Spirit of God is not standing over a blank notebook with a stopwatch waiting to see whether you can still do it.

A blank page is not a verdict

I want to go carefully here, because of the thought that arrived on the window seat, which was not about the house.

The head like a room with the furniture taken out. The being unable to do the thing you have always been able to do. And underneath it, the fear pretending to be a conclusion: if I cannot do this anymore, what am I now.

Nothing in Scripture treats that as a downgrade in a person. Not once. The man praying that psalm was not less himself for needing to be told the next step instead of the route. He was a person in trouble asking for what a person in trouble actually needs, which is company and a direction for the next few yards, and he was not embarrassed about it in front of God.

You were not diminished by the fact that the answer did not come at twenty to six. Scripture never grades a soul by how quickly it resolves things, and His Spirit is not comparing this morning with the mornings when you were sharper.

And there is something else in that line worth having. For in thee do I trust. He is not saying I trust that I will work it out. He is saying the trust is aimed at a Person, which means the weight of the decision is not resting on the quality of his thinking at first light. It is resting somewhere that does not get tired.

This hour is yours as a gift and not as a work session. The word gives the morning its own portion rather than making it an installment on the whole road, and the Spirit is the One who hands it over while the tea goes cold on the ledge.