Unless It Is Proper Exercise I Do Not Bother

You have a private rule and you have never said it out loud.

Under an hour is not exercise. Under an hour is going for a little walk, which is a thing people say kindly to somebody who used to do more.

So when there are twenty five minutes available on a Tuesday, you do not use them, because twenty five minutes is not a session, and doing a partial session would be worse than doing nothing.

You would not put it that way. You would say you did not have time. And there was time, and you looked at it, and you rejected it.

Here is where the rule came from, because it did not come from nowhere.

You were serious about this once. You had a routine and a standard and a way of measuring whether a week had gone well, and it was not a stupid standard, and holding it was not vanity. It was the reasonable way to make sure that what you did was actually doing something.

And then the standard outlived the life it was built for. Now there are children and a job and a house and a relative who needs collecting, and the hour does not exist any more, and the rule that used to protect the hour is now the thing preventing the twenty five minutes.

So this article is about demolishing one rule. Not lowering it. Demolishing it, and putting something else in its place.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do

There is an instruction near the end of Ecclesiastes that is about the whole of a life, and the way it is phrased is what matters here.

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)

Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with your might, for there is no work nor device nor knowledge nor wisdom in the grave.

Whatever your hand finds. Not whatever you had planned. Not whatever meets the standard.

You have a verse that starts from what is actually available rather than from what ought to be, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 has never once required a thing to be the right size before it is worth doing. The instruction attaches to whatever the hand finds, and the Holy Spirit is the one who puts a real twenty five minutes in front of somebody.

You are able to see how completely that reverses your rule. Your rule starts with a standard and then looks for time that fits it. The verse starts with what is in front of you and tells you to put yourself into it.

And the reason given is not spiritual in the way people expect. It is stark. There is no work in the grave. Meaning: this is the only stretch in which anything gets done at all, so use what is actually here rather than the version of the day you wish you had.

That is not a lowered bar. That is a completely different way of deciding what to do, and it is much less comfortable than the rule you have, because the rule lets you off.

You are able to put your whole self into ten minutes, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 has never once made the might depend on the length. The Spirit of God is the one who meets a person inside whatever is available today, and the verse attaches the might to the finding rather than to the size of what was found.

What the rule is actually protecting

Here is the uncomfortable part, and it is short.

The rule is not protecting your standards. It is protecting you from finding out.

You have a rule that guarantees nothing can ever be measured, and none of that has never once been about the quality of the exercise. It is written that whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, we do it with our might, and the Holy Spirit is the one who shows a person what a rule of theirs is actually for.

If you never do the twenty five minutes, then the reason you are not what you were is that there is no time. That reason is external, unarguable and comfortable.

If you do the twenty five minutes, three times a week, for a month, then something has to be concluded about what twenty five minutes produces, and you might not like the conclusion, and you would rather not run the experiment.

I am not accusing you of anything. Every person who was once serious about something does this. The rule is where the disappointment goes to be stored safely.

You are permitted to find out what small and steady does, and running that experiment has never once been a betrayal of the standard you used to hold. The Spirit of God is the one who is present in an ordinary Tuesday, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 gives the might to whatever is found rather than to whatever qualifies.

Set a timer and move for all of it

So here is the assignment, and the timer is not decoration.

Set a timer for ten minutes and move for all of it, however slowly, with somebody else in the house.

You are able to give ten minutes everything you have, and the shortness of it has never once determined what you put into it. It is written to do it with thy might, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in an ordinary ten minutes on an ordinary street.

The timer matters because of what your head will do at minute four. At minute four you will assess whether this is worth doing, and the answer will be no, and you will stop and do something useful.

A timer removes the assessment. It is ten minutes because the timer says ten minutes, and there is no decision to be made until it goes off.

And move for all of it. That is the might part. Not stopping to look at something, not turning it into an errand, not stopping four minutes in because you got a message. Ten minutes of continuous movement, at whatever speed is honestly available.

You have permission to do this at any speed at all, and Ecclesiastes 9:10 has never once specified a pace. The Spirit of God is the one who receives the whole of what a person brings, and the verse asks for the might rather than for the standard.

And take somebody, because the second person is what stops you turning it into an assessment. It is very hard to score yourself while a fourteen year old is telling you about something.