He worked out how long it had been while he was hoovering, which is where a man finds out most things about himself.
Four years.
Four years since anybody who was not family had eaten in that house. Not a dinner, not a coffee that turned into an afternoon, not a Saturday where somebody came round. Four years, in a house he chose because it had a big kitchen.
And it is not that he does not want people. That is the thing he had to sit down on the stairs about.
He wants them very much. He is the one who used to do it. There are photographs somewhere of that kitchen with fourteen people in it and every chair in the house dragged in and somebody sitting on the worktop.
What happened is that it got complicated, and then it got difficult, and then it got easier not to.
Because in his head, whenever he thinks about having people, a seating plan starts. Who could be at a table with whom. What would come up. Which subject would arrive at about nine o'clock. Whether one of them would say a thing that would land on another one and whether he would be able to get it off the table before it did.
He is not paranoid. Two of those evenings genuinely went badly, years ago, and he handled them badly, and he has never quite recovered from the second one.
So the seating plan runs, and the arithmetic never comes out, and he has said, four years running, that he is just busy.
You know that kitchen.
Maybe yours is smaller. Maybe you have simply stopped mentioning one set of people to the other. Maybe you have never once had a birthday where everybody who matters to you was in the same room, and you have made your peace with that without ever admitting it was a peace you made.
Nobody did it to you. This is the quiet cost of standing between two things, and almost nobody who pays it ever names it out loud, because there is no injury to point at. Just a house that used to have people in it.
Somebody else did the receiving
Here is a sentence written to a congregation that was, at that very moment, having the exact argument your seating plan is trying to prevent.
Wherefore receive ye one another, as Christ also received us to the glory of God.Romans 15:7
Read the second half first, because it changes the first half completely.
As Christ also received us. That is the standard and it is also the mechanism. Not: build a room where everyone gets along. Not: work out who can bear whom. Receive one another the way you were received, which was without conditions, in advance, before anybody had been vetted.
And notice who is not given a job in that sentence. Nobody is appointed to manage the room. There is no host in the verse, no chairman, no one made responsible for what gets said at nine o'clock.
You are received, and being received is what you have to hand out rather than something you have to engineer. That is what the verse does by making Christ's receiving the pattern (Romans 15:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who is described as the one who makes peace between people rather than any host who ever laid a table, which is why the seating plan has never come out right.
The plan was never yours to solve
Here is why the arithmetic never balances, and it is not a failure of imagination on your part.
You have been trying to solve a problem that is not a seating problem. You have been trying to guarantee an outcome in other people, and there is no arrangement of chairs on earth that does that, so the calculation genuinely has no solution and you have been running it for four years anyway.
You have been holding a responsibility nobody gave you, and the outcome of an evening was never yours to secure. Scripture says if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men (Romans 12:18), and read the two conditions in it, if it be possible and as much as lieth in you, both of which are limits placed by God on what a person is answerable for, and it is the Holy Spirit who does the reconciling that lies outside those limits.
And the two evenings that went badly. Let us not skip them.
They happened. You did handle them badly, by your own account, and that is allowed to be true. You have not been disqualified from having people in your house by two evenings. The word says a just man falleth seven times, and riseth up again (Proverbs 24:16), and His Spirit is the one who does the raising, and He has never once treated a badly handled evening as a verdict on a man's hospitality.
What this page is not saying
Nothing here tells you to put those particular people in that particular room. This site does not know them, does not know what is between them, and has no business staging a reconciliation in somebody else's kitchen.
If two people in your life should not be at the same table this year, they should not, and that is wisdom and not fear, and you are the only person who can tell the difference.
You are not being handed a project, and nobody here is asking you to fix anything between anyone. The word says wisdom is profitable to direct (Ecclesiastes 10:10), and it is the Holy Spirit who gives that wisdom liberally to anybody who asks for it, which is a better guide to your own kitchen than any article could ever be.
The invitation on this page is much smaller. One person. Once.
Here is the turn, and it is one person, not fourteen.
You do not have to solve the room. The room was never the assignment and it is not going to be solved, and four years of trying has proved that more thoroughly than any argument could.
Ask one person round. One. Somebody easy. Somebody who is not on either list and does not raise a single question in the seating plan.
You are free to open your own door, and the arithmetic does not have to come out first. Scripture says receive ye one another, as Christ also received us (Romans 15:7), and it is the Holy Spirit who has already received you into a room that has both halves of everything you are in it, which means the standard was met somewhere else before it was ever asked of you.
And the big table is not lost. You have not been cut off from the life you used to have, and a kitchen with fourteen people in it is not behind you. The word says he setteth the solitary in families (Psalm 68:6), and His Spirit is the one who does that setting, in His own way and His own time, however He answers, and it has never been the job of the man doing the hoovering.
Tuesday. One person. Eat standing up if the table has things on it.
Declare this over yourself
Say these out loud, in your own kitchen, in your own voice. The standing to speak this way is yours in Christ and it is not issued on the strength of how well you can manage a room. Scripture is the ground under it, the Holy Spirit is what makes it living rather than merely encouraging, and what He does at that table and when is His, however He answers.
- Seating plan that runs in my head, you are not my responsibility and you never balanced because you never could. The Word of God says receive ye one another as Christ also received us, which makes receiving the standard and not the managing. In the name of Jesus I stop doing the arithmetic today.
- Two evenings that went badly a long time ago, get off this house. Scripture says a just man falls seven times and rises up again, and the Holy Spirit is the one who does the raising, and He has never treated one bad evening as a verdict on a man. My own kitchen is still mine to open.
- Father, I bought this house for the kitchen and nobody outside my family has eaten in it for four years. Your word says You set the solitary in families, and Your Spirit is the one who does that setting in Your own way and Your own time. I am sending one message today with a day in it, and I am opening my own door.
Romans 15:7
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
