The Next Ten Days

He has looked at it eleven times and it is not yet eight in the morning.

Two apps, because they disagree, and one of them he trusts more but the other one was right in June and he has not forgotten that. And the long range one that he knows is essentially a rumor and looks at anyway.

Ten days. That is the whole of it. Everything on this place for the next ten days, and after that it does not matter nearly as much, and before that there was nothing to do.

Ten days, and it is out of his hands in a way that almost nothing else on this farm is.

His father was like this too. He remembers him at the kitchen window with a mug, not drinking it, just standing there looking west, and he remembers thinking as a boy that his father was watching for something and being slightly frightened by it.

Now here he is at the same window doing the same thing with a phone instead of a horizon.

And here is what has been getting at him, and it is not the weather.

He has been handed, over the years, by kind people, a number of things to say over this. Declare it. Speak to the sky. There is a formula, one man told him once, in a tone that was meant to be encouraging, and if you say it in faith it works.

He tried it. Standing in a gateway, at forty-one, feeling ridiculous, saying words at a cloud.

And what he wants, at the window with the phone in his hand, is not a better formula.

He wants to know whether he can hand ten days to somebody, and go and do the jobs.

And you know that exactly, because there is something out of your hands that you have been given words to say at instead of somebody to give it to.

Not a formula, a Father

Let us settle what governs this whole page. Nothing on it is being asked of you, there is no appeal at the bottom, and there is no formula in it anywhere.

You are looking at an invitation, and the One being tested inside it is God. Follow the verb in the famous sentence and it lands square on Him. He is under examination. He is the one who offered to be found out. It is written, and thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts (Malachi 3:10), and it is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who takes the sentence back off the people who borrowed it.

Here it is, in its own room:

Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need.Malachi 3:10

Said to a nation, in one decade, about one building, where the store room had emptied and the families who worked there had gone home hungry. It is a sentence about people eating. And the voice it is spoken in is not a foreman's and it is not a machine's. It is a father's. Come and find out whether I am who you have decided I am. It is the Holy Spirit, not this page, who carries a sentence like that out of its own century and sets it down where you are standing.

Now the formula, and it is worth being fair to the men who handed it to you.

They were mostly trying to help, and they had usually been given it themselves, and underneath it there is something true: God does invite people to speak, and words are not nothing.

But what it turns into, out in a gateway at forty-one, is a machine. And a machine is safe. If the sky runs on the right words said in the right way, then ten days is not out of your hands after all, and there is still something you can do about it standing in a gap in a hedge.

The price of that is the part nobody mentions. If it runs on your words, then a wet fortnight is your fault, and you will carry it, and men in this line of work carry enough.

You are dealing with a Father and not a formula, and He has never once run on anybody's wording. Jesus put it in the plainest domestic terms: which of you, if his son asks for a fish, will give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion (Luke 11:11). There is no procedure in that sentence. There is a child asking and a father who is not that sort of man. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes a line like that off a page and stands it at a kitchen window at eight in the morning.

Now the sky itself, since that is what is in your hand at the minute.

The weather is His and it has never been yours, and that is not bad news, it is the end of a weight you were never meant to carry. It is written that He gives rain on the earth and sends waters on the fields (Job 5:10), and that He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45). Read that second one properly, because it is the whole answer to the formula: rain is not a verdict and it is not a scoreboard and it does not track anybody's performance. It falls on everybody. That is a fact about God, and it means a wet fortnight has never been a message about you. The Holy Spirit is the One who takes a line spoken in one decade and makes it live in an ordinary room today.

And He knows exactly what a farmer is looking at when he stands at a window.

Your Father knows what you need before you ask Him, and He is not waiting on the right phrasing to find out. It is written in Matthew 6:8, and then, in the same passage, He says look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and your heavenly Father feeds them (Matthew 6:26). He picked farming words on purpose to say it to people who worked ground. His Spirit is the one who makes that a hand on a shoulder rather than a nice line about sparrows.

Now where the trusting actually goes.

Trust is not a technique and it has no steps, so nobody here is going to give you any and nobody is going to hand you words to say at a cloud. It has an object. You name one real thing out loud, hand it over, and go and do the jobs.

Not money. Nothing on this site will ever ask you for that or route anything anywhere, including here. One real thing: the ten days, the cut, the field you are worried about.

You are owed nothing for trusting Him, and that is exactly what makes it trust and not a transaction. It is written that we have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, Abba, Father (Romans 8:15). Nobody says Abba to a forecast.

And one last thing, for a man who has felt ridiculous in a gateway.

If you find this hard, you are not failing at it. Trusting is not a skill you are being marked on. Finding it hard is not evidence about your faith, it is evidence that the whole year is riding on ten days, and any man with sense would find that hard.