The Term Runs Out And I Do Not Know

There is a date and it is closer than it was.

You have known the date for years and it was always a long way off and it is not a long way off now, and something has to be said to somebody in the next while.

And you do not know.

That is the honest position. Not leaning one way. Not secretly decided. You genuinely do not know, and every time you sit down to work it out you get about four minutes in and something slides sideways.

Here is what is actually underneath it, and it took a while to see.

You are not stuck on the decision. You are stuck on what the decision says about the years.

Renewing would mean the years were worth continuing. Ending would mean they were something to be finished with. And both of those readings feel like verdicts on a large part of a life, and so the decision has been carrying a weight that has nothing to do with the paperwork.

That is why four minutes in it slides. It is not a business question any more. It is a question about whether it was all worth it, and that question cannot be answered by a form.

There is a verse about seasons that separates the two, and separating them is what will let you think.

To every thing there is a season

Ecclesiastes says a thing about time that everybody knows and almost nobody applies to their own working life.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. (Ecclesiastes 3:1, King James Version)

To every thing there is a season. A season is a bounded stretch. It has a beginning and an end and both of those are ordinary.

And notice the word purpose. A time to every purpose. The season is not a container for wasted time; it has a purpose in it, and the purpose belongs to the season rather than to what comes after.

You have been inside a season with its own purpose rather than inside a trial period, and the Holy Spirit is the one who assigned that purpose. Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts a purpose in the season itself, and He assigned it to the years rather than to their continuation.

Now what that does to the weight on the decision.

If a season has its own purpose, then the ending of it is not a verdict on it. A season that ends has not failed. Winter does not judge autumn.

So carrying on does not certify the years and stopping does not cancel them, and neither reading was ever true.

You are not going to say anything about the years with this decision, and it is written that every thing has its season and every purpose its time. The Spirit of God is the one who put the purpose inside the stretch, and Ecclesiastes 3 does not make one season the judge of another.

And there is one more thing in that verse, and it is the freeing part.

A time to every purpose. Not one purpose across a whole life. Purposes, plural, each with its own time.

Which means whatever comes after this, whether it is the same thing for another term or something completely different, has its own purpose that this one does not decide either.

You have a next season with its own purpose regardless of which way this goes, and the Holy Spirit is the one who holds both this one and the next. Scripture puts a time to every purpose rather than one purpose over everything, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 is where they are separated.

What the years actually made

Let me be practical, because the decision still has to be made and this is what makes it possible.

You cannot decide well while the decision is carrying a verdict. So the verdict has to be settled first, separately, and then the decision becomes what it actually is, which is a practical question with facts in it.

And the way to settle it is to find out what the years made.

Not what they produced. What they made in you. Those are different, and the second one is the one that is not on the paperwork.

You have something to establish before you decide anything, and it is written that the purpose sits inside the season rather than in what follows it. The Spirit of God is the one who did the making, and He did it across the whole stretch rather than at the end of it.

And it will not be a long list. It never is. Two things, maybe three. A patience that a man who has never been overruled does not have. A steadiness at a counter that people can feel in four seconds. The particular way you handle somebody who is upset, which took eleven years and about four hundred people.

Those are on nobody's form and they leave with you whichever way the date goes.

You are carrying what the years made rather than what they produced, and the Holy Spirit is the one who made those two or three things. The written word puts a purpose in the season that its ending cannot reach, and Ecclesiastes 3 is why they belong to the stretch rather than to its outcome.

Write one down and read it out loud

So here is the thing to do, and it comes before any conversation with anybody.

Write down one thing this work made in you. One. On paper, in your own hand. Then read it out loud, once, on your own.

You are settling the verdict rather than making the decision, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 puts a purpose in the season itself. The Spirit of God is the one who receives it, and He is the one who did the making in the first place.

Then keep the paper, and read it again before you sit down with anybody about the date.

The reason to read it before rather than after is that a man who walks into that conversation with the verdict still open will make the decision about the wrong thing. He will be trying to settle a life question with a business form and it cannot be done.

Read the paper first and the conversation becomes what it actually is: dates, figures, terms, and a decision a man of your age is perfectly able to make.

You are able to make this decision as a practical matter rather than as a verdict, and the Holy Spirit is the one who separated those. It is written that every thing has its own season and every purpose its own time, and Ecclesiastes 3:1 is where the separating is done.

Then open in the morning, because the date is not today.