It Stopped On Sunday Night

The display said eighteen minutes for eighteen minutes.

You watched it. That is the part you have not told anybody, because it sounds ridiculous when you say it out loud. You stood in front of a washing machine for a full minute waiting for a number to change, and it did not change, and you kept standing there.

Then you opened the door and it was full of water and everything in it was soaking.

And here is what happened in the four seconds after that, and it is the actual subject of this article.

You thought: of course.

Of course this week. Of course now. Because the car went in the spring and the school thing is still not settled and there is the appointment on Thursday that you have not told anybody about, and now this, and there was a moment on Sunday night standing in front of a dead machine where the whole lot arranged itself into a shape.

And the shape was: something is against me.

You would not put it that way to a person. You are sensible and you know how a washing machine works and you would say, if asked, that a pump fails when a pump fails. You may even have said something like that out loud, in a light voice, to somebody in the kitchen.

But at ten past nine on Sunday, alone, in front of a drum full of water, you did not think that. You thought: what is this about.

So I want to deal with that first, before anything practical, because it is what you are actually carrying and nobody has addressed it.

The timing is not a message.

Think ye that they were sinners above all men

There is a moment where Jesus is asked about a disaster, and he answers the question underneath it rather than the question itself.

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay. (Luke 13:4, King James Version)

Think ye that they were sinners above all men. I tell you, Nay.

A tower fell. Eighteen people died. And the question in the room, which is the same question that was in your kitchen on Sunday, is: what did that mean about them.

And he does not soften it, and he does not explore it, and he does not say it is complicated. He says no.

They were not being singled out. The falling of that tower was not a verdict published about eighteen particular people, and anybody reading it as one has read it wrong.

Now hold that against your Sunday.

If a tower falling on eighteen people is not a judgment on those eighteen, then a pump failing in a week that was already bad is not a judgment on you. It is not even in the same universe of seriousness, and the principle covers the larger thing first.

And notice why he bothered to say it. He said it because that is how people read events, then and now. It is the oldest instinct in the world to look at a bad week and start reading it for a message, and he addressed it directly rather than leaving people to work it out.

So the four seconds on Sunday night were not you being irrational or faithless. They were you being a person. And the answer, given in advance, is: no. That is not what this is.

A bad week is not a verdict, and the timing of a broken machine has never once been a message about you. Luke 13:4 asks whether the ones the tower fell on were sinners above all others and answers plainly, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody standing in front of a dead machine at ten past nine.

It is a machine

Here is the practical half, and it is smaller and more freeing than it sounds.

What broke is a machine.

It is a motor, a pump, a drum, a board, and a heating element, and one of those has failed after some number of thousands of cycles, which is what those parts do. It has no view about your week. It did not wait. It has no information about the appointment on Thursday and no capacity to hold any.

That sounds obvious written down. It is not obvious at ten past nine on a Sunday, because at ten past nine everything in a hard season joins up, and the mind assembles a pattern out of unrelated failures because a pattern is easier to carry than a run of coincidence.

A pattern feels like meaning. Even a hostile pattern feels better than no pattern, which is why you reached for one.

But the car and the school thing and Thursday and the pump have nothing to do with each other. They are four separate things that happened near each other in time. That is genuinely all.

And here is what that costs you if you leave it unchallenged. A broken washing machine is a problem that takes a week and some money and a phone call. A verdict from God on your household is a thing that takes years off a person. You have been carrying the second one since Sunday, and it is not yours to carry, and it was never issued.

Put it down. It is a machine.

What broke is a machine and not a verdict, and a run of hard things has never once been a pattern with a message in it. The written word answers the question about the tower with a plain no, and the Spirit of God is the one who is with somebody carrying a sentence that was never passed.

Do one thing about it today

So here is the assignment, and it is deliberately not about fixing it.

Do one thing about it today, even if the only thing available is emptying the drum.

One thing. Today.

Make the call to somebody who repairs them. Look up what the code on the display means. Ask the person at work who knows about these. Move the basket into the hall. Find out what your options actually are.

And if none of that is available today, if there is no money to spend and no call worth making yet, then empty the drum.

Bail it out with a jug into a bucket, get the wet things into a basket, and stand it somewhere. It takes fifteen minutes and it changes nothing about the machine.

But it does something to you, and that is what this is for.

Since Sunday you have walked past that machine and looked away from it. It has become a fixed object in your kitchen that means something, and every time you pass it you receive the message again, and doing nothing about it confirms the message: this is happening to me and I have no say.

Doing one thing breaks that. Not because it fixes anything. Because a person who takes one action in front of a problem is no longer a person a thing is happening to.

And do not make a plan. Do not decide tonight what you are going to do about the whole situation, because you cannot know that yet and a plan made in this state is just the pattern again wearing a suit.

One thing. Today. Then stop.

You are able to take one action in front of it, and doing something has never once required you to know the whole plan first. Luke 13:4 refuses to read a falling tower as a message, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody bailing out a drum with a jug.