Fourteen Came And None Stayed

He knows all fourteen names.

That is the part he has not said to anybody. Not the number, which he has mentioned once or twice as a rueful joke, but the names, and the fact that he can go through them in order.

Six years. Fourteen people who came once, or twice, or in one case for about two months, and then did not come again.

Some of them he understands. A man who was in a bad patch and moved away. A young couple who were plainly looking for something with more going on for children and there is nothing wrong with that.

But most of them he does not understand at all, and there was never a conversation, and you cannot ring somebody who came twice.

Here is what he noticed in the spring and has been ashamed of ever since.

Somebody new came in, and he felt himself brace.

Not visibly. He was warm and he did all the right things and the woman would have gone away saying everybody was lovely. But inside there was a small flat voice that said: fifteen.

Six years of hoping have quietly turned into six years of not letting himself hope, and it happened without a decision, and he found out about it in about a second and a half at a door in April.

As the rain cometh down

Stand in that doorway a minute, because there is an image in Isaiah about how the word of God moves, and it is worth reading for what the rain is not asked to do.

For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void.Isaiah 55:10 to 11

The rain comes down.

It is not told where to land. It does not select the ground, and it has no way of knowing which field will produce and which will not, and it does not come back up to check.

And the promise is not attached to any particular field. It shall not return unto me void. That is said about the word itself, and about the whole of what it does, and not about the fourteenth house on a street.

Hear this in your own doorway. You have not wasted six years, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture sends rain down without telling it where to land and puts the promise on the word rather than on a field, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you at that door welcoming every single one of the fourteen.

Now let me name what the brace is, because it is not cynicism and cynicism would be an unfair word for a man who still stands at a door.

It is arithmetic doing what arithmetic does.

Fourteen times, something began and did not continue. Any creature that can learn will start predicting after about the fifth, and by the eleventh it is not a thought, it is a reflex, and you did not choose it any more than you choose to blink.

That is not a moral failure. It is what a man who keeps hoping in the same direction for six years ends up carrying, and the only reason you noticed it in April is that you are honest enough to look.

Hear this too, and let it land at the door. You are not the reason none of them stayed, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts the word rather than the soil under the guarantee, and the Spirit of God has never once made a man responsible for whether somebody came back the following Sunday.

And let me be plain, because this is exactly the ground where these pages go wrong. Nobody here is promising you that the fifteenth will stay. That is not mine to promise and it is not anybody's, and any page that promises growth is selling something.

And nothing here says your gathering has failed. Fourteen people were welcomed properly by a man who meant it, at a difficult time in each of their lives, and none of that has been undone by their not coming back. You do not know what any of them are doing now. You are not going to know. The rain is not told, because that is what is written, and the Holy Spirit went out of that door with every one of the fourteen.