I Have Nothing Left By Four O'Clock

Four o'clock. Sometimes half past three.

That is when it goes. Not tiredness exactly, though there is that. It is the patience, and it does not run down gradually, it stops, the way a light goes off.

And there are five hours left. Dinner is in there, and the getting home from things, and the conversation at the door about the thing that was forgotten, and the part of the evening where somebody who is nine has a very large feeling about something small.

You will get through all of it. You always do. But you will get through it as a person operating on nothing, and you can hear the difference in yourself, and so can everybody else in the building.

I am not going to tell you how to have more energy. That is a system and this is not a place that hands those out, and you have already tried the sensible ones.

And I am not going to tell you to rest, because there is no hour in your day where that instruction could be carried out and we both know it.

My strength is made perfect in weakness

There is an answer Paul got that was not the answer he asked for, and the wording of it is the whole thing.

And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. (2 Corinthians 12:9, King James Version)

Made perfect in weakness. Not in spite of it. In it.

The weakness is not an obstacle that grace works around. It is the location where the strength is completed, which means the four o'clock version of you is not a worse platform for God to work from. It is the described one.

You are standing in the exact condition where His strength is completed, and it has never once been the wrong starting point. 2 Corinthians 12:9 says my strength is made perfect in weakness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who brings that into a kitchen at four in the afternoon.

And the first half is the part that answers the arithmetic in your head. My grace is sufficient for thee.

Sufficient is a measured word. It means enough for the requirement, and it says nothing about surplus. Paul was not given a reserve. He was given enough.

You have grace that is sufficient rather than abundant, and enough has never once been the same as running out. It is written in 2 Corinthians 12:9 that the grace is sufficient, and the Spirit of God is the one who supplies to the requirement rather than to the anxiety.

The tank is the wrong picture

Now let me name the model running underneath all of this, because it is doing damage and it is not what the verse describes.

The model is a tank. It starts full in the morning, empties across the day, and at four it hits zero, and everything after that is being done on fumes and by force of will.

Under that model, the evening is a deficit, and every good moment in it is something you produced from reserves you did not have, and that is exhausting to think about let alone do.

2 Corinthians 12:9 does not describe a tank. It describes a supply arriving at the point of need, which means five o'clock is not being funded by seven in the morning.

You are not running the evening on what was left over from the morning, and there has never once been a tank with your name on it. 2 Corinthians 12:9 puts the strength at the point of weakness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies at five rather than at seven.

And here is the plain thing, because years of four o'clock have become a verdict.

That is not a verdict. It is not a score, it is not a grade, and it is not evidence about how much patience lives in this house.

It is a human being with a finite afternoon, doing a demanding job at the hour when every demanding job is hardest.

You have not been running low on love, and an empty afternoon has never once been a measurement of what is in you. The written word puts the perfecting of strength in the weakness itself in 2 Corinthians 12:9, and the Spirit of God is the one who refuses to read four o'clock as a character.

Sufficient is not a small word

One more thing, and it is about the word that sounds like a consolation prize.

Sufficient sounds thin. Most people would prefer abundant, or overflowing, or any of the words that suggest there will be plenty spare.

But sufficient is the only one that answers your actual question, which is not whether you will feel full. It is whether you will get through the evening.

And it says yes, with nothing to spare and nothing missing, which is exactly the shape of every evening you have ever had.

2 Corinthians 12:9 promises enough rather than plenty, and the Holy Spirit is the one who supplies an evening without ever making it feel comfortable.

You are given enough for the evening, and it has never once needed to feel like plenty to be enough. 2 Corinthians 12:9 calls the grace sufficient, and the Holy Spirit is the one who meets the requirement without producing a surplus anybody can feel.