What I Make Looks Like Nothing

I am not going to tell you that it is better than you think.

That is the first thing, and I want it said before anything else, because you have heard the other thing and it did not help. Somebody looked at what you made and said it is lovely, and you knew immediately that they were being kind, and the kindness landed as proof that it needed kindness.

So let us take that off the table. Some of what you make is not good. You can see that it is not good, and your eye is not broken, and the gap you feel between what you meant and what came out is real and you are measuring it accurately.

Now. Here is the question that actually matters, and I do not think anybody has ever put it to you.

Who said it had to be good?

Not who said it had to be good to sell, or good to show anybody. Who said it had to be good at all, for you to be allowed to do it on a Tuesday evening in your own kitchen?

Because you have imported a standard from somewhere, and you have applied it to a thing nobody is judging, and then you have felt stupid for failing a test that was never set.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do

There is a line in Ecclesiastes that people usually read as a call to excellence, and I want to read it more slowly than that.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest. (Ecclesiastes 9:10, King James Version)

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do.

Look at what is doing the choosing there. Not your talent. Not an assessment of your aptitude. Your hand finds a thing, and the instruction is to do it. There is no clause anywhere in that sentence about being suited to it, and there is no standard set for the result.

Do it with thy might means put yourself into it. It does not mean do it well. A person can put everything they have into something and produce a poor result, and that sentence is satisfied.

And then the reason given is the strangest and most freeing part. Because there is no work in the grave. That is not an argument about quality at all. It is an argument about the fact that you are alive now and you have hands now, and the window for using them is the window you are standing in.

You are permitted to do the thing your hand has found, and there has never once been a standard set on the result of it. Ecclesiastes 9:10 puts the choosing in the hand rather than in an assessment of talent, and the Holy Spirit is the one who lifts a test off somebody that nobody set.

Where the standard came from

Here is what I think happened, and it happens to almost everybody who says this sentence.

You saw finished work. Somewhere, probably on a screen, you saw the good version of the thing you are doing. And it did not arrive labeled with the twenty years behind it, or the forty failures underneath it, or the fact that the person photographed the one that worked.

So you compared a Tuesday evening to somebody's best public result, and you concluded something about yourself.

And there is a second thing underneath it, which is heavier. Somewhere you decided that being bad at something in front of yourself is embarrassing. Not in front of other people, in front of yourself. You watch yourself doing it badly and you feel the shame of it in an empty room.

That is not modesty and it is not realism. It is a standard imported from a place that has nothing to do with your kitchen.

You are looking at your own hands through a standard you borrowed, and it has never once belonged to the room you are sitting in. The written word sets no measure on the result and puts the whole weight on doing the thing at all, and the Spirit of God is the one who takes a borrowed measure out of somebody's hands.

Make one thing and do not fix it

So here is the assignment, and the second half of it is the hard half.

Make one thing, and do not fix it.

Not fixing is the whole exercise. You will make it, you will see immediately what is wrong with it, and your hands will want to correct it. Do not. Leave the wrong bit exactly where it is, and let the thing be finished with the fault in it.

I am asking that because the fixing is where the standard lives. Every time you correct the thing to make it acceptable, you agree again that it had to be acceptable. Leave one fault in and the agreement breaks.

And do not throw it away afterwards, and do not hide it. Put it somewhere ordinary.

Ecclesiastes 9:10 sets no standard on the work and only says do it, and the Holy Spirit is the one who steadies a person's hands when they are refusing to correct something.

You are able to leave a thing wrong, and heaven has never once required your work to be acceptable before it counted as work. Ecclesiastes 9:10 says whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present in something made badly on purpose.