Three Months Of Waiting For Better

The plan was sensible.

That is the part to establish before anything else, because the way it looks from here is like a mistake, and it was not a mistake. It was a plan, made by two reasonable people at a kitchen table, and the reasoning was good.

The reasoning was: if we hold on for a bit, we can get one that lasts, and we will not be back here in two years.

Anybody would have said that was wise. Your mother would have said it. The man at work would have said it. It is the advice that gets given at every table in the country.

And then it was three months.

Three months of a household washing by hand, of the arrangement with the neighbor, of the two trips to the laundromat that were supposed to be temporary, and at the end of the three months the money was not actually closer, because a month with any life in it has things in it.

And now there is a second feeling sitting underneath the first one, and it is the harder one. It is not about the machine. It is: we should have just got one in April.

You are a household that waited in good faith and not a household that wasted three months, and a plan built on a month that had not arrived has never once been a foolish plan to have made.

Boast not thyself of to morrow

There is a proverb about the future that is usually read as a warning against arrogance, and it is really about information.

Boast not thyself of to morrow; for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. (Proverbs 27:1, King James Version)

For thou knowest not what a day may bring forth.

That is the reason it gives. Not that planning is proud. That the information required is not available. A day has things in it that nobody could have known, and that is a description of how days work rather than an accusation against people who make plans.

You are living in a world where the next month is genuinely unknown, and a plan that assumed an ordinary month has never once been a plan made carelessly. The Holy Spirit is the one present with two people at a kitchen table doing arithmetic again, and Proverbs 27:1 gives ignorance of the day as the reason rather than pride.

Now look at what happened to April, May and June against that verse.

There was a car thing. There was the week somebody was ill. There was the school expense that turns up every year and is forgotten every year. None of those were foreseeable in April, and every one of them ate the amount that was being held back.

The plan did not fail because it was a bad plan. It failed because a day brought something forth, three times, exactly as the proverb says days do.

You were not outwitted by anything and you did not miscalculate, and three ordinary months with ordinary things in them have never once been evidence of bad judgment. The written word says plainly that nobody knows what a day brings, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a plan from its weather.

And notice what the proverb does not forbid.

It does not forbid planning. It does not say make no arrangements. It forbids boasting of tomorrow, which is treating an unknown month as though it were money already in a drawer.

You are permitted to plan and forbidden only to count on it, and a household that hoped for a better month has never once been a household boasting about one. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a person plan without staking everything on the plan, and Proverbs 27:1 aims at the certainty and not at the intention.

The three months are not owed to anybody

Something practical, and it is about a piece of arithmetic that keeps getting run.

The arithmetic is: three months of hardship, and nothing to show for it. And it keeps getting run because it is a debt shaped thought, and debt shaped thoughts want settling.

But nobody owes those three months to anybody. They are not a deposit that has to be recovered. They happened, and they were hard, and they are over, and the machine that gets bought now is not required to be better in order to justify them.

You are not owed anything by these three months, and a stretch of difficulty has never once had to be redeemed by a better outcome afterward. The written word treats the unknown day as a fact rather than as a debt, and the Spirit of God is the one who closes an account nobody was keeping.

And here is where that arithmetic gets dangerous, and this is the actual reason for this article.

If the three months have to be justified, then only the better machine will do. Which means the waiting has to continue, because the better machine is still not affordable, and a household can be three months further on saying exactly the same sentence.

That is how three becomes six. Not by a decision. By an unpaid debt that nobody is actually owed.

You are able to end this on Saturday rather than three months from now, and a household buying what it can afford has never once been a household giving up on something better. The Holy Spirit is the one who makes a decision possible in the month that has, and Proverbs 27:1 refuses to let anybody count on a month that has not arrived.

So buy the one that can be afforded this week. Not as a defeat and not as a lesson learned. As the thing that ends the arrangement with the neighbor and gives a household its evenings back.

And then stop pricing the other one. That is the second half and it matters as much. The looking is what keeps the debt alive.

You have a machine you can bring home this week and a laundromat you can stop driving to, and a household that ends an arrangement has never once been a household that lowered what it wanted. The Holy Spirit is the one present in the month that actually exists, and Proverbs 27:1 refuses to let anybody bank on an unarrived month.