I Took It Back To Fix One Thing

You had it in your hands and she had her hand out.

That is the moment, and it is worth being exact about it, because the whole three months turned on about two seconds.

You saw the thing at the top where the stitching doubles back, and something in you said no, and you pulled it in slightly and said, actually, let me just fix one thing first.

And she said of course, and the moment closed, and you took it home.

That was in June.

I want to go carefully because the fault is real. I am not going to tell you it is not there or that nobody would notice, because you would notice, and you are somebody.

But look at what has happened to it since.

In June it was a small imperfection in a finished thing. It is now the reason a gift has been in a bag for three months, and the longer it sits there, the more the handing over will need to be explained, and the explaining is now bigger than the fault ever was.

There is a version of this where you fix it. You know that. It would take about twenty minutes and you have had roughly ninety evenings.

Which means the fixing is not what has been happening, and it is time to be honest about what has.

And Moses did look upon all the work

There is a moment at the end of the building of the tabernacle where somebody inspects the whole thing, and what he does next is the part that matters.

Months of work. Dozens of makers. An enormous quantity of woven, carved, cast and stitched objects.

And Moses did look upon all the work, and, behold, they had done it as the LORD had commanded, even so had they done it: and Moses blessed them. (Exodus 39:43, King James Version)

And Moses blessed them.

He looked upon all the work. He inspected it properly, which is what that phrase means. And at the end of the inspection there is no list of corrections.

The account moves from looking to blessing in one sentence, with nothing in between.

You are being shown an inspection that ended in a blessing, and Exodus 39:43 puts the looking and the blessing side by side with no corrections between them. The Holy Spirit is the one who takes the end of an enormous building project and lays it down on a bag in a hall with something in it since June.

And nobody thinks that work was flawless. Hundreds of people made thousands of things by hand. There will have been a doubled seam somewhere in that tabernacle.

You have work that a proper inspection could bless, and it is already settled in the written word that the blessing came without a punch list attached. His Spirit is the one who says Moses blessed them over a woman who cannot hand over one finished thing.

The fixing is not what has been happening

Now let me say the honest thing, gently, because it has probably been half said already in that house.

Ninety evenings and twenty minutes of work.

That is not a scheduling problem. Something else has been going on, and I would guess it is something like this.

While it is in the bag, it is nearly given. The moment is still ahead of you, and in that version of the moment the thing is perfect and she is delighted and nothing goes wrong.

You are able to hand over a real object instead of keeping a perfect one, and Exodus 39:43 blessed the work straight after the looking. The Holy Spirit is the one who empties a bag that has been full since June.

Handing it over ends that. It becomes a real object in somebody's real hands with a real doubled seam in it, and whatever happens then is what happened.

The bag is where the good version lives.

And this: the seam is not a measure of you, and how she reacts is not a measure of the thing. It is stitching that doubled back at the top, and in ten years it will be the least interesting fact about that object.

You are not waiting for twenty minutes of work, and heaven has never once required a gift to be corrected before it could be given. Exodus 39:43 blesses the work after looking at all of it, and the Spirit of God is the one who separates a fix from an avoidance.

And do not fix it now either. Do not spend Thursday evening on it and then hand it over on Friday, because that keeps the rule intact and just satisfies it late.

You have permission to give it faulty, and this is yours: the blessing in that verse followed a full inspection and required no repairs. It is written in Exodus 39:43 that Moses blessed them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes an inspected imperfect work a blessed one.

Give it this week with the fault in it

So here is the ask.

This week, take it out of the bag and give it to her with the fault exactly as it is.

Do not fix it first. That is the whole exercise and everything else is detail.

You are handing over work that a full inspection already blessed, and Exodus 39:43 puts nothing at all between the looking and the blessing. The Holy Spirit is the one who refuses to insert a correction where Scripture put none.

And when you hand it over, do not explain the three months. She has almost certainly forgotten, because people forget, and if she has not forgotten she will not mind, because nobody has ever minded about this as much as the person holding the bag.

Say here, and her name, and nothing else.

You were never required to correct it first, and this is yours: Exodus 39:43 blesses the work after an inspection and asks for nothing to be redone. The Spirit of God is the one who ends a wait that was never about twenty minutes of stitching.

If she notices the seam, she notices a seam. That is a person seeing an object.

And make something else this week, badly, in twenty minutes, so that the twenty minutes finally gets spent and it gets spent on something new rather than on a repair.

You are covered while a doubled seam goes across a kitchen table, and Exodus 39:43 is the ground under that. The written word moves from a full inspection to a blessing with nothing in between, and the Spirit of God is present in a hall where somebody is opening a bag that has been shut since June.