Six years at the same church, and he did the arithmetic in the car park in October.
He is known there. That is not the problem and he wants that said first, because when he tried to explain this to somebody once it came out as a complaint and it is not one.
They know his name. They ask about his knee. Somebody prayed with him properly in a side room during a bad month two winters ago and it mattered and he has not forgotten it. He is on a rota. Two men shake his hand every single week and mean it.
Nobody has ever been in his kitchen.
Not once, in six years. And he has not been in anybody else's, and he cannot think of a single moment where that was refused or avoided, because it has never come up at all.
The conversations are good. They are ten or twelve minutes long, in a foyer, with a cup, and then everybody has to be somewhere, and that is not anybody's fault. That is what a foyer is and what it is for.
It has been six years of ten minutes.
He worked out in the car park that if you laid every conversation he has had with the man he likes most in that building end to end, it would come to about a day and a half, spread over six years, and neither of them has ever seen where the other one lives.
In the temple, and from house to house
Sit down at the table a minute, because there is a single verse in Acts that names both halves of this and puts them in the same sentence.
And they, continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, did eat their meat with gladness and singleness of heart.Acts 2:46
In the temple. And from house to house.
Both. In one line, joined by an and, with no comparison between them anywhere and no suggestion that either is the real one.
I want to be plain about this because the verse gets used badly. It is not evidence that home gatherings are more authentic than the temple, and the people in that verse were in the temple daily and gladly. Nothing on this page is a word against your Sunday, and if that hall on a Sunday morning is the best two hours of your week then you are holding something the whole verse honors, because it is written into the same line, and the Holy Spirit has met you in that hall for six years.
But the sentence has two halves in it, and you have had one of them for six years.
Hear this in the car park. You are not on the outside of that church, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts the temple and the house in the same line with an and between them, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has kept you in that building faithfully for six years and put a man in a side room with you in a bad month.
Now let me name what a foyer actually is, because it is not a failure and calling it one would be unfair to everybody in it.
A foyer is a room designed for arriving and leaving.
There is a cup in your hand and a coat over your arm and somebody needs to get past, and there are ten minutes because there are ten minutes. Nobody built it to hold a friendship. It is doing exactly what it was made to do, and it does it well, and it has been doing it well for you for six years.
The trouble is only that nothing else has been added to it, and nothing else gets added to it by attending more.
Hear this too, and let it land at your own table. You have not failed at anything, and Scripture is what says so. What is written holds the temple and the house together without ranking them, and the Spirit of God has never once required a man to force a friendship out of a room with a coat rack in it.
And the man you like most. You have known who this is since the second paragraph.
He has been standing in that foyer for six years too. He has had the same ten minutes from his side. There is a reasonable chance he did an arithmetic of his own in a car park at some point and never told anybody about it either.
Somebody has to say a day out loud. That is the whole mechanism, and it has never happened in six years because it requires one person to move first and both of you have been waiting in a room built for leaving. The written word holds the temple and the house together, and the Holy Spirit has kept you in that building faithfully the whole six years.
So this week you name a day.
Not a general thing. Not we should do something sometime, which you have both said versions of already and which is a foyer sentence in a foyer voice and produces nothing. The written word puts a house in the same line as the temple, and the Holy Spirit has kept that man in front of you for six years.
You say: come to us on Saturday, about six, there will be food, bring whoever.
That is it. That is the entire distance between six years and a table, and it is one sentence long, and you can say it in the foyer next Sunday with a cup in your hand.
And it might be awkward for the first twenty minutes. It usually is. Nobody has ever done this without twenty strange minutes at the start and they pass, and what is on the other side of them is the second half of a verse you have been living half of for six years.
The written word puts the temple and the house together in one line without ranking them, and the Holy Spirit has had you in that building faithfully for six years, so nothing about naming a day is a complaint against anybody there.
You are not lonely. You are half fed, in a good place, by good people, in a room that was built for coats.
Declare this over yourself
Say these at your own kitchen table. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the Holy Spirit has kept you in that church faithfully for six years according to the written word, so the standing you speak from was never built out of who has seen your kitchen. Whether Saturday is easy or strange for twenty minutes, the outcome is His to decide, and it is never a measure of a man who has been there every week for six years.
- Six years of good mornings, you are not friendship and you were never meant to be the whole of it. Scripture says continuing daily in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house, and there is an and in the middle of that sentence and both halves are in it.
- Foyer voice that says we should do something sometime, get out of my mouth, in the name of Jesus. The written word never once ranked the house above the temple, and the Spirit of God has kept me in that building six years and put a man in a side room with me in the worst month I have had.
- Lord, You put the temple and the house in one line and did not rank them, and Your Spirit has had me there faithfully for six years, exactly as it is written. I am saying a day out loud this week, and it is Saturday at six, and there will be food.
Acts 2:46
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