One Spare Chair and No Spare Energy

Two chairs and a low lamp and the fire not lit because lighting it is a job.

It used to be fourteen people.

Not showing off. It was just the house it was. Sunday evenings for about nine years and people brought things and there were children on the stairs and somebody always stayed too late and she loved that part most.

She has not had anybody in this room since about November.

The door is the thing. Not the cooking, not the mess, not the money. The door. Somebody arriving, and the twenty minutes before somebody arrives, which is when she now feels something she did not use to feel and does not have a word for except that it is in her chest.

She had a bad two years. That is as much detail as she gives anybody and she is not going to give more here either.

And what has happened since is not that she has become unfriendly. She rings people. She writes to two people properly, on paper, once a month, which almost nobody does.

It is that the version of her that filled a room is gone and she does not know if it comes back, and everybody in her life met that version first.

And there is a phrase that has been sitting in her about it, from a chapter she has read a hundred times, and it is: given to hospitality.

She reads that now and it reads like a description of somebody she used to be, and there is a specific shame in reading a verse and feeling it looking backwards at you.

If you kept an open house and cannot face the door now, you know that lamp. And you know what the verse does when you read it: it does not accuse you, it just sits there being about somebody you were.

The word, and then what that phrase is actually about

Let me take the second chair, since it is there, and say the plain thing.

The problem is not the house. The house is fine and you could do it, mechanically, tomorrow, and everybody would come.

The problem is that a phrase in a chapter you love has quietly become a photograph of a woman who no longer exists, and you have been reading it that way for about a year, and reading a verse as a photograph is a slow injury.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean the house full. It means the favor of God is resting on a person, His face is turned toward them. It is about where He is looking. It was on you with fourteen people and children on the stairs, and it is on you tonight with the fire not lit.

Now the phrase, and I want to take it apart because English has done something to it.

Distributing to the necessity of saints; given to hospitality.Romans 12:13

Given to hospitality. In English that reads like a lifestyle. It sounds like a description of a house.

The word underneath it is about pursuing, following after, being disposed toward. It is a word about which direction a person faces, not about how many chairs they own.

And the word hospitality is, literally, love of strangers. Not entertaining. Not hosting. Love of the person who is not yet inside.

So the verse is describing a disposition toward people who are not yet in, and it says nothing whatsoever about scale, and it never once mentions a table.

You are facing the same direction you were facing with fourteen people in this room, and the phrase is about the facing. Romans 12:13 uses a word about pursuing rather than about capacity, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears that disposition in a person, which is why it did not leave with the version of you that could fill a room.

What you have actually been doing since November

Now let me tell you what you have been doing, because you listed it yourself and then moved past it as though it were nothing.

You ring people. You write to two people, on paper, once a month.

On paper. Once a month. To two people. For a year.

Do you know how rare that is? Almost nobody alive does that. And the two people receiving those letters are, I would guess, not people who have anybody else writing to them, because that is who somebody like you writes to.

That is love of strangers with a stamp on it.

And you have not counted it, because it does not look like the thing you used to do, and you have been measuring yourself against a photograph.

You have been doing the thing that verse describes for a year and calling it nothing. Romans 12:13 names the disposition rather than the format, and it is the Holy Spirit who bears it in whatever form a person's actual life allows.

And the twenty minutes before somebody arrives. I want to say something about that, because you called it a thing you do not have a word for.

There is a word for it, and it is not weakness, and it is not a spiritual state. A body that has been through a bad two years does that. It is a nervous system, and it is doing a thing nervous systems do, and it is not a report on your character or your faith.

You are not being asked to explain a body's response as a spiritual condition. Scripture never once treats a fearful body as a moral fault, and it is the Holy Spirit who is called the Comforter, which is a word for somebody who comes to a person in that state rather than sending them a standard to reach.

The smallest thing that still counts

So here is the practical shape of it, and it is deliberately tiny.

Not fourteen people. Not Sunday evenings. Not a return to anything.

One person, in this room, in the second chair, for an hour, with the fire not lit and nothing made.

And you tell them in advance that you are not doing anything, so that the twenty minutes has nothing in it to prepare for. That is the whole design of it: remove the preparation and the twenty minutes has nothing to fill itself with.

One. And if that is too much, then the letters continue and that is the thing, and there is no version of Romans 12 that says otherwise.

You have a smallest thing that still counts, and the verse never once set a floor. Romans 12:13 names a disposition without a scale attached anywhere in the sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who is at work in one chair as much as in fourteen.

And nothing comes back to you for it. Not energy, not a restored version of yourself, not a Sunday evening in a year's time. This site does not sell that and I am not going to.

I do not know whether the version of you that filled a room comes back. Some of her may. And if the two years have left something that a doctor should hear about, tell one, and that is not a failure and it never was.