I Will Do It When I Have Time

Let me ask something, and answer it honestly and only to yourself.

If somebody gave you a completely free Saturday tomorrow, with nothing in it and nobody needing anything, would you spend it fixing the drawer?

You would not. You know you would not. You would rest, or see somebody, or do eleven small necessary things, and the drawer would still be there on Sunday, exactly as it has been since the spring of the year before last.

That is the piece of information that changes the whole conversation. The sentence has been I will do it when I have time, and the sentence is not true, and it has never been true, and the untruth of it is not a moral failing. It is just a wrong diagnosis, and a wrong diagnosis will keep a person still for years.

Before we go on, let me put the important thing down. Not knowing how is not a character flaw, and neither is having said a sentence for six years without examining it. Everybody has one of those. Most people have several.

Now is the accepted time

There is a line in Second Corinthians that is short enough to be missed and specific enough to be useful.

Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. (2 Corinthians 6:2, King James Version)

Paul is writing about salvation, which is infinitely larger than a drawer, and I am not going to pretend the verse is about a kitchen. But the word he chooses is worth taking.

Accepted. Not perfect. Not convenient. Not the one you would have picked. Accepted, meaning received, meaning this is the one that has been given.

You have been handed an accepted time rather than a perfect one, and an ordinary Tuesday evening has never once been a lesser gift than a Saturday. Second Corinthians 6:2 puts the word now in front of a person twice in one sentence, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lets that read as an open door rather than as a stopwatch.

And notice how the whole force of that verse sits in one small word repeated. Now, and then now again. Paul does not build an argument. He points at the present and says twice that this is the one.

You are standing in the accepted time already, and the day in your hand has never once been the wrong day to do something small. The Spirit of God is the one who makes the present moment feel usable, and it is written in Second Corinthians that the word given is now and not shortly.

What the sentence is actually made of

Here is the honest version of what has been happening, and none of it is shameful.

I will do it when I have time is doing three jobs at once. It ends the conversation without an argument. It keeps the job alive as an intention, so nobody has abandoned anything. And it protects the person saying it from finding out whether they can do it.

That third one is the part carrying the weight. As long as it is a time problem, it is not a competence problem, and nothing has been tested.

You have been protected by a sentence rather than delayed by a shortage, and a phrase that keeps a job alive has never once been the same as a person who does not care. It is written in Second Corinthians 6:2 that the accepted time is now, and the Holy Spirit is the one who can retire a sentence without shaming the person who used it.

And there is a second thing, which is about size. A job that has waited six years has grown. In your head it is now a whole afternoon with an unknown middle in it. That growth happened silently and nothing about the actual drawer changed.

Most jobs of this kind are between eleven and forty minutes. Six years of imagining is what turned it into a Saturday.

Now the limit, and I say it here rather than in a footer. Never a gas appliance, never the breaker panel, never mains wiring, never a wall holding the building up, never a roof. Call a licensed professional and pay them properly. And when the real answer is that the money is not there yet, then waiting is genuinely the right thing and it is not the same trap at all.

You are entirely right to wait for the money to do a dangerous job properly, and knowing the difference between real waiting and a sentence has never once been a small skill. The Holy Spirit is the one who gives a person clarity between the two, and Scripture puts the now in front of a person rather than a schedule.

Eleven minutes, with a timer

So here is the ask, and the timer is the important part.

Do eleven minutes of it tonight, and set a timer so that you can stop.

Not the job. Eleven minutes of the job. And the timer is not there to make you hurry. It is there so that starting does not mean committing your whole evening, which is what has actually been stopping you.

You are able to give eleven minutes to something you have carried for six years, and a small measured piece of work has never once been a lesser thing than a whole afternoon. The Spirit of God is the one who meets a person inside the ordinary time they actually have, and Second Corinthians 6:2 says now twice in one short sentence.

Eleven is chosen because it is odd enough to be believable. Ten sounds like a token. Eleven sounds like somebody meant it.

When the timer goes, stop. Even mid job. Especially when it is going well, because stopping while it is still going well is what makes tomorrow easy.

And write down where you got to, in one line, so that starting again does not require remembering.

You have permission to stop after eleven minutes and call it finished for tonight, and a job left in the middle has never once been worse than a job left in a sentence for six years. It is written in Second Corinthians that the accepted time is the one in your hand, and the same Spirit who breathed that line is standing in the kitchen with you.