I Say Yes And I Never Ask

She was sitting in a car park with the engine off when it arrived, which is apparently where these things happen.

Eleven years in that town, and she has never started one single thing.

Not one. She has been at everything. The birthdays, the barbecues, the thing at the school, the Tuesday group, the long weekend two summers ago that half of them still talk about. She is invited to more than most people. Nobody would ever describe her as being on the edge of anything.

Every last one of them was somebody else's idea.

She said yes. She always says yes. She brings food and she stays late and she helps clear and she is genuinely, uncomplicatedly glad to be there.

And in eleven years she has not once been the person who says: come to mine on Saturday.

She sat in that car park and went through it properly, looking for one exception, and the closest she got was a time she offered to host something that had already been arranged by somebody else and needed a venue at short notice.

That is not the same thing and she knew it before she had finished thinking it.

Greet the church that is in their house

Sit down at that table a minute, because at the end of Romans Paul goes through a long list of names, and there is a phrase in it that most people read straight past.

Likewise greet the church that is in their house.Romans 16:5

The church that is in their house.

Two people are named in that verse, Priscilla and Aquila, and the gathering is at their address, and Paul says so out loud in a letter that has been read for two thousand years.

Somebody had to be the house. Somebody had to be the one who said, it can be at ours, and then said it first, before anybody suggested it, and their names are in the letter because of it.

And they were not remarkable people in any way the world would have measured. They were tent makers. They had moved towns more than once, not by choice. They were not the wealthy family in that city and there is no suggestion anywhere that the house was anything special.

Hear this in the car park. You are not a passenger in that town, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture names two tent makers as the address a whole church met at, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has had you saying yes and bringing food and staying late for eleven years.

Now let me name what the yes is doing, because it is not passivity and passivity is a stupid word for a woman who clears up after everybody.

Yes is safe and asking is not.

When you say yes, the thing already exists. It has been decided by somebody else and it is happening whether you come or not, and your presence is a gift you are adding to something that is already real. That is written into eleven years of it, and the Holy Spirit has been in every one of those rooms with you.

When you ask, you make the thing exist. And then it can fail. People can be busy, and two can say no, and one can say yes in a tone you will think about for a week, and the whole event is now attached to your name in a way that a yes never is.

Eleven years of adding yourself to other people's real things, because their things cannot fail.

Hear this too, and let it land where you sat. You have not been coasting on anybody, and Scripture is what says so. What is written puts two tent makers' address in a letter read for two thousand years, and the Spirit of God has never once required a person to be remarkable before she could be the one who says it first.