There are eleven chairs in a rough circle and she is on the one nearest the door because the baby is asleep on her and might not stay that way.
It is a good group. They are kind. Nobody has ever made her feel anything.
It goes round. The woman opposite has a thing from Isaiah that has clearly been sitting with her for days and it is genuinely lovely and everybody says so. A man says something about a passage he has been in all week. Somebody prays a prayer that has proper shape to it, with a middle and an end, and she thinks: that is a good prayer, that person has been thinking.
She has read nothing all week. Not a verse. She could not tell you what she prayed, if she prayed, beyond a sort of running noise she makes in her head from about half past five in the morning. There was a Tuesday when she cried in the parking lot at the supermarket for no reason she could name and then went in and bought the shopping.
It is getting closer round the circle.
She has nothing. That is the plain fact she is sitting with, with a sleeping baby on her chest and a bottle in the bag by her foot. Everybody in this circle has something in their hands and she has come with nothing, and the only reason she is here at all is that her mother has the older one for an hour and a half and she could not think where else to go.
It gets to her and she says, "I am just glad to be here," and the woman next to her squeezes her arm, and it moves on.
If you have ever sat in a circle with nothing in your hands, you know that chair. And you know the sentence: everybody brought something and I came empty, and I am fairly sure that is the difference between them and me.
Empty is the entry requirement
Let me say the low thing first, quietly, because there is a baby asleep on you.
The problem is not that the week was hard. You have had hard weeks. The problem is that you have started sorting people into ones who bring things and ones who do not, and you have put yourself in the second group, and then you have quietly extended that sorting to God.
So let me read you the first line of the list Jesus gave, because of all the sentences in the Bible, this is the one for the chair nearest the door.
Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.Matthew 5:3
Blessed, first. It does not mean cheerful and it does not mean coping. It means God's favor rests on that person, His face is turned toward them. Jesus is standing on a hillside naming groups and saying: God is toward these ones.
Now poor in spirit. The word for poor there is not the word for somebody on a low income. It is the word for a beggar. Somebody with nothing at all, crouched, hands out, entirely dependent on what is put into them. It is the strongest word for empty that the language had.
Jesus opens the whole list of the blessed with the people who have nothing to bring.
You are the first person named on that list, and you are named by the very thing you have been apologizing for. Matthew 5:3 puts the poor in spirit at the head of it and never asks what anybody brought, and it is the Holy Spirit who is given as a gift to people rather than earned by them, which is the same arrangement all the way down.
Two words got the same spelling somewhere. One of them means favored. The other one means well prepared. You have been holding the second one on your lap in a circle of chairs.
Theirs is, present tense
Now the second half, and I want you to notice the tense, because Jesus changes it deliberately.
Look down that list. They shall be comforted. They shall inherit. They shall be filled. They shall obtain mercy. All future.
Except the first one and the last one. Theirs IS the kingdom of heaven. Present tense. Now. Currently.
Which means whatever is being handed out, it is not being handed out later to the people who prepare well between now and then. It is being handed out at the moment of empty handedness, which is where you are sitting.
You have the kingdom of heaven in the present tense, on the chair nearest the door, with nothing in your hands and a baby asleep on your chest. Matthew 5:3 says theirs is rather than theirs shall be, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the earnest, the deposit paid now, so the present tense in that verse has something behind it.
And let me deal with the running noise you make in your head from half past five, because you have been calling it not praying. It is praying. Paul says the Spirit helps our weakness because we do not know what to pray for as we ought, and that the Spirit intercedes with groanings that cannot be put into words. That is not a description of eloquence. That is a description of exactly what has been going on in you since half past five this morning.
You have been prayed through all week by somebody who does not need you to find the words. Romans 8:26 says the Spirit itself makes intercession for us, and it is that same Spirit who has been doing the shape and the middle and the end of it while you were doing the shopping.
The woman with Isaiah is not your problem
One more thing, and then I will let you go back to the circle.
The woman opposite with the thing from Isaiah is not doing better than you. She is in a different season of life, and she has time in her week that you do not have, and she is bringing what her season allows. In eleven years, if life goes as life goes, you will be her, and there will be a girl on the chair nearest the door with a baby on her and nothing in her hands, and you will remember this exactly.
And what she brought is not currency. Nobody in that room is buying anything. That is the whole point of the beggar word: the kingdom is not being sold, so a person with nothing is not at a disadvantage in the queue.
You are not behind anybody, and there is no queue in that room to be behind in. Scripture opens the blessings with the empty handed rather than the well prepared, and it is the Holy Spirit who gives gifts severally as He will, which means the distribution in that circle was never a ranking.
I do not know what the next few months look like for you. I am not going to guess, and if you are ever in a week where the parking lot thing happens and does not stop, tell one person who can act, that day, out loud. Your health visitor, your doctor, your mother. That is not a failure of faith and it never has been.
What is written is where God's face is pointed while you sit on that chair, and it is pointed at the people with nothing.
So here is what I want to put in your hands, which is the point, since they are empty.
You did not come to that circle short. You came to it qualified. The one condition attached to the first line of the whole list is having nothing, and you have met it more completely than anybody else in the room, and you have been sitting there apologizing for it.
You are blessed in that chair, this evening, with nothing read and nothing prepared, and blessed means God's face is turned toward you here. Matthew 5:3 blesses the poor in spirit and uses the word for a beggar, and it is the Holy Spirit who has been carrying your prayers all week without needing them to have a middle and an end.
So take the word. Not the circle's version. His. Say it over the week you have actually had, half past five in the morning, the parking lot on Tuesday, the hour and a half your mother gave you, and mean by it what Jesus meant on the hill: God is toward me, and I came with nothing, and nothing is the door.
You have the kingdom in the present tense, which is not something you are working toward. Scripture puts that clause in the present on purpose while the rest of the list waits, and His Spirit is the deposit already paid, so what you have is not a promise about later.
Declare this over yourself
Say this out loud in the chair or the car. You are in Christ and Christ is in you, and the standing to be called what God calls you came with Him and never came from a prepared week. Scripture is under every line here and the Holy Spirit carries it, not how much you have read. What He does with this season is His to decide, in His own way and in His own time, and I am not going to guess at it. Your part is to say it and mean it, and to tell somebody who can act if a week ever gets heavier than this one.
- Empty hands at the back of that circle, you are exactly what the door asks for and you are not a shortfall. Matthew 5 says blessed are the poor in spirit, and poor there is not a word for people who brought a little.
- Sorting that put me in the second group and then extended itself to God, get out, in the name of Jesus. Romans 8 says the Spirit makes intercession with groanings that cannot be worded, and the running noise I make from half past five has been prayer the whole time.
- Lord, the kingdom is mine in the present tense and You said it that way on purpose. I came with nothing and nothing was the door, and I am saying so with a sleeping baby on my chest.
Matthew 5:3
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