He Did It Once And Not Daily

You would not put it in these words, but the way you live says it clearly enough.

Every morning there is a small internal act of recommitment. Not prayer exactly. More like re-signing something. A deliberate turning toward the marriage, done privately, before the day starts.

And on the mornings you forget, or wake late, or wake in a bad mood and skip it, there is an unease that follows you around until you have made it up somewhere in the afternoon.

Which means, if you follow the logic of your own habit, that you believe the joining runs down. That it has a battery in it, and the battery is you.

I want to be careful here, because there is a version of this article that makes you feel foolish, and that version would be wrong as well as unkind.

The habit came from somewhere good. Somebody taught you to be intentional and you took it seriously. Almost nobody does. The instinct is right and the theology underneath it slipped.

So let me repair the theology and leave the seriousness alone.

What God does is not added to

There is a verse in Ecclesiastes 3 that says something very specific about the permanence of God's work.

that which hath been is now; and that which is to be hath already been (Ecclesiastes 3:15, King James Version)

And two verses earlier the writer says that whatever God does, nothing can be put to it, and nothing taken from it.

Nothing can be put to it. That is the phrase I want in your morning.

Your daily act of recommitment is an attempt to add something to a completed work. Not out of arrogance. Out of care. But it is an addition, and the text says additions are not possible.

You are unable to add to what God completed, and Ecclesiastes has never once made a person's diligence part of the structure. Ecclesiastes 3:15 puts what has been and what is to be inside what God has already done, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that restful rather than fatalistic.

The reverse is what will actually reach you though. If nothing can be added, then nothing can be taken away either. That is the same sentence read from the other end.

You have never once been able to reduce it by forgetting, and the word has never put the joining inside your memory. The passage keeps God's work whole in both directions, and the Spirit of God is the one who tells somebody a missed morning removed nothing at all.

The seriousness can stay

I do not want you to lose anything real here, so let me be precise about what is being taken away and what is not.

What goes is the maintenance. The morning re-signing, the unease when it is skipped, the quiet arithmetic about whether enough turning toward this got done this week.

What stays is the intentionality, which is a genuine virtue and is a large part of why this marriage is a decent one.

There is a difference between choosing your husband today because you want to, and choosing him today because you are afraid of what happens if you do not. Only one of those is love, and the other one is upkeep on a thing that does not require it.

You are free to be intentional without being responsible for the structure, and the two have never once been the same task. Ecclesiastes 3:15 puts the whole of it inside what God has done, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separates devotion from maintenance.

You were joined once, by a promise and by God, and that covenant has never once run down overnight. It is written that nothing can be put to what God does and nothing taken from it, and the Spirit of God is the one who lets a person wake up late without a debt.

Say it, and skip a morning on purpose

Here is the assignment and there is something in it that will feel wrong, and the wrongness is exactly the point.

Say out loud, alone: God joined this. He did it once and it holds.

Then, tomorrow morning, skip the recommitment on purpose. Deliberately. Do not do it, and do not make it up in the afternoon.

Notice what happens, which will be nothing. The marriage will be exactly as joined at six in the evening as it was at seven in the morning.

You are able to let a day pass without renewing something that was finished, and it has never once lapsed while you were not attending to it. Ecclesiastes 3:15 keeps God's work whole with nothing added and nothing removed, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present on the first morning somebody deliberately does not re-sign.

And if the unease comes anyway, say the sentence again and go on with the morning.