The Same Boring Route Every Time

Somebody says it out loud about once a month now.

Not that one again.

And the interesting thing is that nobody in your house means it unkindly. It is said the way people say things about the weather. The route is the route, everybody has done it four hundred times, and there is a shared understanding that it is a bit worn out.

So you have started looking for somewhere new. Which is reasonable, and it is also why nothing has happened for about six months, because somewhere new needs a plan and a Saturday and probably a way of getting there, and none of those have arrived.

I want to put a different possibility in front of you. Not a better route. The same route, with a different job on it.

Because I would like to ask what is actually on it, and I suspect nobody in your family could tell me.

Open his eyes, that he may see

There is a moment in Kings where a frightened man is standing next to somebody who is not frightened at all, and the difference between them is not courage.

And Elisha prayed, and said, LORD, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the LORD opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha. (2 Kings 6:17, King James Version)

Open his eyes, that he may see.

Read what does not happen in that verse. Nothing arrives. No chariots are sent. Nothing is added to the mountain, and nobody is moved to a better mountain.

The only thing that changes is what one man can see, and the whole situation reverses.

You are standing on ground that already has more on it, and it was never a different place that anybody in that account needed. 2 Kings 6:17 changes the eyes and not the mountain, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes that read as an opening rather than as a criticism of anybody who could not see.

And notice how the young man is treated. He is not told off for being frightened. He is not told he should have known. Somebody prays for his eyes, which is a kindness, and it is done for him rather than demanded of him.

You have somebody who opens eyes rather than requiring them to be open, and it was never your job to manufacture interest in a street. The written word puts the seeing in God's hands and the asking in somebody else's, and the Spirit of God is what makes an old road a thing that can be looked at again.

Worn out is a statement about looking

Now let me take the word worn out apart, because it is doing something it has not earned.

A route cannot be worn out. It is not consumed by being walked. Nothing is used up by a family going down it four hundred times.

What is worn out is the looking. And that happens because the brain does a very sensible thing with anything repeated, which is to stop processing it and file it as known.

That is not laziness and it is not familiarity breeding anything. It is efficiency, and it is mostly useful, and it has one side effect, which is that a road you know is a road you no longer see. The ordinary route is not used up, and there is more on it than anybody has looked at.

You are not out of places, and it was never the street that ran out of anything. 2 Kings 6 alters the eyes and leaves the mountain exactly as it was, which is exactly why the Spirit of God does not send a family looking for somewhere else.

And there is a practical consequence. Every hour spent looking for a new route is an hour not spent outside, and six months of looking has produced no walks at all, which means the search for somewhere better has cost more than the boredom ever did.

Three things, and let them find them

So the practical part, and it is a task rather than a mood.

Walk the usual route and find three things nobody in the family has ever noticed.

You are able to give a known road a new job, and it has never once required anywhere new to have done something different. The passage changes what a man can see without changing one thing about where he is standing, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is out on a familiar route with a family looking properly.

Three each. And let the children find theirs, and do not correct any of them, and do not rule anything out for being too small.

A number on a door. A window that is not like the others. A gate that has been mended with the wrong thing. Moss on one wall and not the next. The point is not that these are interesting. The point is that they are there, and that nobody in your household could have named one of them this morning.

You are handing them a way of seeing rather than a place to go, and one of those has never once needed a Saturday. 2 Kings 6:17 puts the whole change in the eyes, and the Spirit of God is the one who is present when a child points at something that has always been there.