The Finish Line Keeps Moving

You wrote the number on the inside of a cupboard door four years ago.

That was your wife's idea and it was a good one. A real figure, in marker, on the inside of the door where nobody else would see it, so that it stopped being a fog and became a thing with an edge.

And two summers ago you reached it.

You did not celebrate. You stood in the kitchen with the door open and looked at the number and then looked at what you had, and they matched, and what you felt was almost nothing at all, because you had already known for about six months that it would not be enough by the time you got there.

So you wrote a new one underneath.

And you reached that one too, in about fourteen months, which was faster than the first because you had got better at it.

And then you wrote a third one.

The inside of that door now has three numbers on it, each one crossed out except the last, and last month you caught yourself doing arithmetic that suggested a fourth, and you closed the cupboard and went and sat down in the other room.

Not because of the money. Because a man who has hit every target he has set and is no closer to anything has to ask what he is actually doing.

What the door actually records

Let me tell you what is written on the inside of that cupboard door, because it is not what you think it is.

You read it as three failures. Three lines, three targets, none of them enough, the last one not reached yet.

It is not a record of targets. It is a record of what two people did in four years.

Read it the other way and it says: reached, reached, working. A man who hit two figures he set himself, in four years, on an ordinary wage, while everything got more expensive, and who is currently mid way through a third.

You have hit every mark you set for yourself, and a line that keeps moving has never once meant the running was wasted. The Holy Spirit is the one who spoke to a man who could not see the end of a thing either, and it is written in Habakkuk 2 that though the vision tarry, wait for it.

And I want to name the specific exhaustion in this, because it is not ordinary tiredness and you should know what it is.

There is a kind of strength that comes from progress you can see. Every time you hit the mark, something in you gets paid, and that payment is most of what keeps a person going for years.

You have been denied the payment three times. Not because you failed. Because the finish moved while you were still running, and there is no ceremony anywhere for a man who arrives at a place that has already been abandoned.

You are worn out from a specific thing, and never once collecting what you earned has never once been the same as never earning it. Habakkuk 2 tells a man to write the vision and make it plain because the waiting is going to be long, and the Spirit of God is the one who did not pretend otherwise.

Though it tarry

Here is the passage, and the situation behind it is worth knowing.

For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie: though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry. (Habakkuk 2:3, King James Version)

Habakkuk is a man who has been asking God a question and not getting an answer, and the book opens with him complaining about exactly that, out loud, in writing.

And what he is told is not a timetable. He is told to write it down and to keep waiting, and he is told directly that it will tarry, which means it will be late by his reckoning.

That is God saying, in advance: this is going to take longer than you think, and you are not being ignored.

You have been waiting on something that has been late by every reckoning you own, and lateness has never once been the same as being forgotten. The Holy Spirit is the one who put the tarrying into the promise rather than leaving it out, and the written word says though it tarry, wait for it.

Now here is where I have to be careful, because this verse gets misused constantly and I will not do that to you.

Habakkuk is not being told about a house. He is being told about God dealing with a nation. And this site will never tell you that a verse about an appointed time means a deposit is coming, because that is a bill with God's name on it.

What the passage does give you is the shape of a thing. It says that waiting for something that keeps not arriving is a known experience, that it was written down by a man who complained about it out loud, and that the delay was never evidence that the man was doing it wrong.

You are inside an experience that scripture describes rather than one that scripture warns about, and a long wait has never once been a report on the one waiting. Habakkuk 2 is written to a man who complained and was answered without a date, and the Spirit of God is the one who did not scold him for asking.