A day with no plan in it feels like a day thrown away.
That is the belief and it runs deep and nobody has ever had to teach it to you. A day counts if something was moved forward in it. If you got up, got through, were decent to people and did nothing about the thing, then the day is a blank in the record, and blanks accumulate, and a life made of blanks is the fear underneath all of this.
So even on the days when nothing is required of you, there is a small machine running in the background asking what this day is for. And if the answer is nothing in particular, something in you writes it off before the evening.
That is why an easy day is not restful for you. You cannot rest inside something you have already classified as waste.
Let me put the plain thing first. You have not been careless with any of this. You have put something into almost every day for years and got up and done it again. Somebody who did not care would have had plenty of blank days and enjoyed them.
So this page is not going to tell you that every day counts. That is a poster.
I want to show you a question God asks about small days, and the tone of the question is the whole thing.
A day is not a unit of production
Consider the accounting underneath that, because it is borrowed from somewhere and it does not fit.
Work has units. A job is either advanced or it is not, and a week of work either produced something or it did not, and that accounting is correct for work and nobody is better at it than you.
A day of a life is not a unit of production. It has things in it that do not convert: an ordinary conversation, weather, a meal, being in the same room as somebody. None of those advance anything and all of them are the actual content of being alive.
You have been using an accounting borrowed from work, and no day of a life has ever once been a unit of production. Zechariah 4:10 says who hath despised the day of small things, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes a question about small days arrive on a man who has been writing them off.
And notice who does the despising in that arrangement. Not other people. Nobody in your life has ever suggested that your ordinary days are worthless. You have been running the audit yourself, on your own days, against a standard you imported from a jobsite.
You have been the only one despising those days, and no other person has ever once been running that audit. The written word asks who hath despised the day of small things, and the Spirit of God is the one who makes a question like that arrive as a rebuke to the audit rather than to the man.
Who hath despised the day of small things
Zechariah puts it as a question in the middle of a building project that was not going impressively.
For who hath despised the day of small things? for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel with those seven. (Zechariah 4:10, King James Version)
Who hath despised the day of small things. It is a question asked with an edge on it, the way you ask a question when somebody in the room has been doing something they should not.
And the thing being done is despising small days. Not having them. Everybody has them. Despising them, which is an act performed by the person living them.
You have been doing the one thing that question objects to, and no small day has ever once been the problem in that verse. Zechariah 4 aims the question at the despising rather than at the smallness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that aim clear to a man who assumed the verse was about his output.
And read what follows. They shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet. The plummet is a builder's line, which means the building continues, and it continues through the days that looked like nothing.
You have days that looked like nothing and were the building, and no small day has ever once been outside the work. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an invisible continuation credible, and the written word says for they shall rejoice, and shall see the plummet.
Live one with nothing in it
Now the part I came to say.
Live today with no plan in it. That is the whole thing and it is harder than any plan.
Get up, get through, be decent to people, do nothing about the thing. Let the day be ordinary. And when the machine starts up in the afternoon asking what this day was for, do not answer it.
You are able to live a day with nothing in it, and no day of that kind has ever once been a blank in anybody's record. The written word asks who hath despised the day of small things, which makes the despising the fault rather than the day, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an unplanned day restful rather than wasted.
And here is why not answering the machine is the whole action. Every answer you have ever given it has been an accounting, and an accounting concedes that a day requires one. Leaving the question unanswered is what ends the audit, and the audit was never anybody's business but yours.
You have an audit that can be left unanswered, and no day has ever once been required to account for itself. The Spirit of God is the one who closes a question a man has been answering daily for decades, and Zechariah 4:10 is the written word underneath it, where the small day is not the problem and the despising of it is.
So here is what I believe is going out over a man reading this.
You have been doing the one thing that question objects to, and no small day has once been the problem in that verse. I am not decorating that. Zechariah 4:10 says for who hath despised the day of small things, and it is the Holy Spirit and not my telling who takes a line like that off a page and puts it beside a drawer with twelve diaries in it.
And then this, which is the word I came with.
You have days that looked like nothing and were the building, and no small day has ever once been outside the work. The Spirit of God is the one who makes an invisible continuation credible to a man who measures by output, and the passage is the written word underneath it, where the plummet stays in the builder's hand through the days that looked like nothing.
You do not have to value the day today. That was never the assignment. Live one with nothing in it.
Declare this over yourself
- Machine that asks what this day was for, you are not owed an answer. Zechariah 4:10 says who hath despised the day of small things, so by the Holy Spirit you audit nothing here, in the name of Jesus.
- Accounting I borrowed from a jobsite, you do not fit a day of a life. The word says they shall see the plummet in the hand of Zerubbabel, and by the Spirit of God I am done being the only one despising my own ordinary days.
- Father, nobody is despising this day and the day of small things was never the wasted one. Your word asks who hath despised it, so by Your Spirit I live today with no plan in it, and then I go to bed at the usual time.
Zechariah 4:10
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