Which Parts Of It Can Wait

There are six things on the list and Terrence has been sorting them since Tuesday.

Not on paper. In his head, at night, mostly between eleven and one, in the dark, while his wife sleeps beside him.

He has been putting them in order. He has moved them around perhaps two hundred times. Some nights item four is second and some nights it is fifth, and the order changes according to nothing except how tired he is and what he half remembers reading once.

And here is the thing that ought to stop the whole business in its tracks, and does not.

Terrence does not know what any of those six things do.

He can read the words. He can read the numbers beside them. He has no idea which one holds the car together and which one is a note a careful mechanic made because he is a careful mechanic. None. He is sorting a list into urgent and not urgent using a system made entirely out of guesswork and the size of the figures.

And he is doing it in the dark, on his own, on a matter where being wrong has consequences that are not financial.

Now, why does a sensible man do that?

Because asking the question feels like it costs something. Not money. Calling and saying which of these is urgent is free, and takes ninety seconds, and any shop will answer it.

What it costs is the admission that he cannot tell. And he has been the one who handles this for nineteen years in that household, and there is a version of him in his own head that would know, and calling means being a different man from that one for the length of a phone call.

His wife said on Thursday, "Did they say what has to be done first?"

And Terrence said, "I'm working through it."

And she said, "Okay," and went back to what she was doing, and he lay awake that night and moved item four to third.

The sorting cannot be done from where he is sitting

Let me put down what I am not doing here, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to tell you which of your six is urgent. I have not seen that car and I am not qualified and a voice at a distance guessing at somebody's brakes would be doing real harm. I am not going to promise you the money for any of it. And I am not going to suggest that praying about it a particular way sorts the list, because that is not true and it is a cruel thing to imply.

And one plain thing first. Money trouble takes some people somewhere much darker than a list of six things. If it has gone there, if there are thoughts in it about not being here, tell somebody tonight: a wife, a brother, a doctor, or the 988 crisis line for anyone in the United States. That is not a detour from this message. It is the most important line in it.

What I want to look at is the two hundred reorderings.

Because every single one of them was done with the same information, which is none. Two hundred passes over a list by a man who cannot rank it, and at the end of it the list is in exactly the state it was in on Tuesday.

You are not short of character, and Scripture says the One who gives wisdom gives it liberally and does not scold the person who asks. James 1 puts the giving and the not upbraiding in the same short sentence, so the asking costs nothing and is met with nothing but the answer, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that a fact about a man at midnight with a list he cannot rank.

That is not laziness and it is not stupidity. It is a man doing the only thing available to him at midnight, which is worry with a spreadsheet's face on it.

Now, here is the verse.

Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.Proverbs 15:22

Look at what the first half actually claims.

Without counsel purposes are disappointed. Not: without counsel a person is foolish. Not: without counsel God is displeased. The claim is about outcomes. Plans made without input fail, and the proverb states it flatly, as a mechanical fact about how things go.

And then the second half names the fix, and the fix is not more thinking. It is more people.

In the multitude of counselors they are established. Established. Made to stand.

So the reordering at midnight is not a smaller version of getting counsel. It is the thing the proverb says does not work.

You are not a man who should be able to sort this alone, and Scripture puts the establishing in the multitude rather than in one person's judgment. It is written that without counsel purposes are disappointed but in the multitude of counselors they are established, which is a claim about how plans actually hold, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a practical instruction rather than a proverb on a wall.

You have been doing the thing the passage names as the failure mode, and doing it faithfully, at some cost, for five nights. Proverbs 15 puts the disappointment on the counsel that never happened rather than on any fault in the man, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that read as relief instead of correction.

The question is ninety seconds long

Here is the practical thing, and it is one sentence on a phone.

Which of these is urgent and which can wait?

That is it. That is the whole call. Any shop in the country will answer it, and most of them will answer it in some detail, because it is the question they most want customers to ask and almost nobody does.

And it does something the midnight sorting can never do. It turns six items into two lists: things that have to happen for the car to be safe, and things that can be scheduled. And two lists with names on them is a plan, and six items in the dark is a weight.

There is a hard half here and I am going to say it plainly, because leaving it out would be the same failure wearing a kinder coat.

Some of those six may be safety items. Brakes, steering, suspension, anything holding a wheel on. And a man ranking those in the dark using the size of the numbers is making a decision he is not equipped to make, about a machine his family rides in.

That is not a reason for panic. It is a reason for a phone call tomorrow morning rather than another night of sorting.

You were never asked to hold a decision you have no training for, and God did not build His people to work that way. Proverbs 15 puts safety in the multitude of counselors, which makes other people's competence part of the provision rather than a last resort, and the Spirit of God is what makes handing it over a relief instead of an admission.

And the tender half, because the nineteen years is the real subject.

Terrence handles this for that household. He always has. And somewhere along the way, handling it came to mean knowing it, and those are not the same thing at all.

A man who calls and asks the right question and writes the answer down has handled it completely. That is the whole job. It was never about being the one with the knowledge in his head.

You have been handling this the entire time, and one phone call is what handling it actually looks like. It is written that a wise man is strong and a man of knowledge increaseth strength, which is Proverbs 24 putting the increase in the getting rather than in already having, and His Spirit is what makes a question asked out loud the strong move rather than the weak one.