I Will Ask When I Am Ready

You are going to ask. That has never been in question.

You are going to ask when the thing is a bit more ready. When you have worked out how to describe it properly. When the busy stretch at work is over. After the visit. When you have got a photograph of the last one you did.

And here is the thing I would like to put beside all of that, gently, because I do not think you have noticed it happening.

The condition has moved. Three months ago the condition was something else, and it was met, and then a new one appeared in its place.

That is not an accident and it is not a run of bad luck with timing. That is a mechanism, and it is doing a job, and the job is protecting you from the moment of asking.

You are ready enough, and a person waiting for conditions has never once been given a day when all of them arrived at once.

I am not saying preparation is worthless. Some preparation is real and some of yours has been.

I am saying that at some point preparation stopped being about the work and started being about the delay, and that the way to tell the difference is whether finishing the preparation ever results in the thing being done.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow

There is a verse in Ecclesiastes that is about farming and is really about this.

He that observeth the wind shall not sow; and he that regardeth the clouds shall not reap. (Ecclesiastes 11:4, King James Version)

He that observeth the wind shall not sow.

Not, he will sow later. He shall not sow. The watching and the sowing are presented as alternatives, and a person doing one is not doing the other.

You are inside a verse that treats watching and doing as two different activities, and a season spent checking the sky has never once turned into a season of work. Ecclesiastes 11:4 says he that observeth the wind shall not sow, and the Holy Spirit is the one who put that as a statement rather than as a warning.

And notice that the verse does not say the wind is imaginary. There is wind. There are clouds. Conditions are real and some days genuinely are worse than others.

The point is not that conditions do not exist. The point is that a person who requires them to be right will find that they never are, because there is always weather.

You have real conditions and an unreal requirement, and a genuine obstacle has never once been the same thing as a reason to wait indefinitely. The Holy Spirit is the one who separates a fact from a rule, and it is written in Ecclesiastes 11 with the wind fully acknowledged.

Name the current condition out loud

So let us get specific, because the mechanism only works while it is unexamined.

What is the condition right now. Say it. The actual one, this week.

Now, two questions about it.

Would the person you want to ask notice its absence. Genuinely. If you asked them today without it, would they say anything, or even think anything.

And second: what was the condition before this one, and when did it get met, and what happened on that day.

You are able to answer both of those in about ninety seconds, and a condition that cannot survive being said out loud has never once been a real requirement. The written word separates the watcher from the sower without softening it, and the Spirit of God is the one who brings a private rule into the open where it can be looked at.

And here is the part that most people have not considered.

The thing you are preparing is very often improved by the asking rather than before it. The conversation tells you what they actually want. The first job teaches you how to describe the second one. The photograph you are waiting to take gets taken on the job you have not said yes to yet.

You are waiting to finish something that only finishes on the other side of the conversation, and a thing learned by doing has never once been learnable by preparing. The Holy Spirit is the one who teaches a person in the middle of the work, and Ecclesiastes 11:4 puts the sowing before the knowing rather than after it.

Ready enough has a definition

Now let me give you something firmer than encouragement, because the word ready has been allowed to float.

Ready enough, for the purposes of this week, means three things and no more.

You can do the thing. You can say what the thing is in one sentence. And you would not be lying if somebody said yes.

That is the whole list. Everything else on your list is improvement rather than readiness, and improvement has no finish line, which is exactly why it is such a comfortable place to stand.

You are already past that three item list, and having more to learn has never once been the same as not being able to begin. The Spirit of God is the one who sends people who are not finished, and the written word has a farmer go out into weather he cannot control.

And a small practical thing. Put a day on it. Not this week. A day.

An open week is the same object as an unmet condition, and it will behave the same way.

You are able to name a day before you put this down, and a date said out loud has never once been as easy to move as a vague intention. The Holy Spirit is the one who holds a person to something small, and it is written that the one who watches the sky does not end up sowing at all.