I Say Sorry For Taking Up Your Time

Sorry to take up your time.

It comes out before the question, every time, and it is the most reasonable sentence in the world, and it is doing something you have never examined.

It puts a price on the thing you are about to ask for.

And once there is a price on something, the next step is arithmetic. How much is this worth. How much of their day am I about to spend. Is what I want worth that.

And you always lose that arithmetic, every single time, which is remarkable, because you have never once known the price.

Nobody has ever told you what four minutes of their afternoon costs them. You made the number up, and then you did the sum with your own number, and then you concluded that you could not afford it.

That is what has been happening in the two seconds before you speak. It has been running for years, and it runs in about a second and a half, and it never once comes out in your favor.

I want to look at that arithmetic today, because I think the numbers in it are wrong.

Teach us to number our days

There is a prayer about counting days, and the interesting thing is who is asked to do the counting.

So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, King James Version)

Teach us. The counting is not something a person is assumed to be good at. It is something God is asked to teach.

Which means the natural way people count their days is unreliable enough to need instruction.

You are one of the days God Himself is numbering, and no person has ever once been assumed capable of counting a day correctly on their own. Psalm 90:12 says so teach us to number our days, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes an unreliable arithmetic out of a person's hands.

Now notice what the counting is for. That we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

The purpose of counting is not to spend less. It is to spend well. There is nothing in the verse about hoarding time or protecting it from other people.

You have been counting in order to spend less, and no verse anywhere has ever once made the counting of days into a defense of them. The Holy Spirit is the one who turns counting into wisdom rather than into thrift, and it is written that the numbering exists so that the heart may be applied.

And notice who is included in the us. It is a prayer said by everybody together, about all their days at once.

Your four minutes and their four minutes are in the same prayer. There is no arrangement in that psalm where one person's time is the valuable kind and another person's is the kind that can be spent.

You were never in the cheaper category, and no psalm has ever once sorted people into those whose days count and those whose do not. The Spirit of God is the one who puts everybody's days into one prayer, and Scripture says us rather than them from the first word of it.

The arithmetic you have never checked

Now let me be concrete, because a general reassurance will not stop a sentence that runs in a second and a half.

Do the sum properly for once, with real numbers.

A question like that takes about four minutes to answer. That is the honest figure for most of what goes unasked.

Four minutes out of the roughly nine hundred waking minutes in a person's day. That is under half of one percent.

You are pricing something at under half of one percent of somebody's day, and no fraction that size has ever once been the thing that broke anybody's afternoon. The Spirit of God is the one who does an arithmetic honestly, and Psalm 90:12 asks for the counting to be taught rather than assumed.

And here is the other side of the ledger, which has never been entered at all.

Being asked is not only a cost. For most people it is one of the better things in a day. Being the one who knows something useful, being trusted, being needed for four minutes by somebody they love. That is not a debit.

Your sister said something about it once, sideways, and you did not hear it because your arithmetic had already finished.

That is a gap in the teaching and it is not a gap in you. Nobody ever says out loud that being asked is a good thing to be.

You have been entering only one side of a ledger, and no accounting has ever once been honest with half the entries missing. The written word puts the counting toward wisdom rather than toward thrift, and the Holy Spirit is the one who enters what has never been recorded.

Ask, and then count

Now the small thing, and it has two halves.

I am not going to suggest you stop being considerate. The consideration is real and it is part of you and nobody here wants to remove it.

Ask one thing this week without saying sorry for the time, and then count the minutes it actually took.

You are able to ask one thing without a price tag on it, and one question has never once cost the person answering it more than they were glad to give. Psalm 90:12 asks for the counting to be taught, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a woman asks without doing the sum first.

The first half is the subtraction. Ask without the sorry. Just the question. The second half is the part that changes things permanently, and it is the counting.

Note the time when you ask. Note it when the answer finishes. Then look at the number.

Because the arithmetic in your head has been running on invented figures for years, and one real number will do more than any amount of encouragement. A real number cannot be argued with at two in the morning.

You are replacing an invented figure with a real one, and no honest number has ever once been higher than the one a person was carrying. The Spirit of God is the one who gives a person a true measurement instead of a feeling, and it is written that the days are numbered so that wisdom may be applied.