The City He Never Meant to Live In

A long table with the cloth on and about fourteen places, and somebody has put out the good jugs, which happens when there is a birthday and nobody has told him whose.

Tuesday.

It has been Tuesday for three years. Whoever turns up. Mostly people who arrived recently with two bags and a phone number, and sometimes people who have been here twenty years and have nowhere to be on a Tuesday.

He never meant to be in this city.

He had prepared for the other one for two years. He had the language, actually had it, not tourist level. He had a contact, and a plan, and a room arranged, and a job that was as good as promised by somebody who turned out to have less authority than either of them thought.

Two refusals. The first one had a reason in it that he could at least argue with. The second one did not have a reason at all. It had a paragraph.

And he came here because here was possible, and he did not know one person, and he sat in a room above a shop for four months in a state he does not describe in detail even now.

And on Tuesdays there are fourteen places and the good jugs are out.

His pastor said, in the second year, that God closed those doors. He said it with a hand on his arm and total confidence.

And he could not say anything back, because there was a table by then, and any objection would have sounded like ingratitude for the table.

If two doors shut and a third one opened onto something you would not give up, you know that room. And you know the difficulty: I cannot say what I think about the refusals without it sounding like I am ungrateful for the table, and I am extremely grateful for the table.

The word, and then the passage everybody uses

Let me help with the last of the chairs and say the plain thing before people arrive.

The problem is not the table. The table is the best thing in your life and you know it.

The problem is that a sentence has been placed on your two refusals by a good man in the second year, and you have never been able to accept it and never been able to argue with it, and so you have been silently holding a position you cannot state for two years.

So let me put the word straight first.

Blessed does not mean the third door opened. 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 in the two years of learning that language and it was on you in the four months above the shop, and the zip code was never the measure.

Now the passage your pastor is thinking of, and I want to read it exactly, because it is stranger than the version people use.

Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.Acts 16:6-7

Two closed doors, and then the man of Macedonia in a vision, and then they go.

So yes, Scripture does contain closed doors that God closes. That is real and I am not going to pretend it is not.

But look at what the text does not do, even there. It never tells them why. Luke does not explain Asia. Luke does not explain Bithynia. Those two provinces get the gospel later, in the same book, so it was not that they were the wrong places, it was not yet, and nobody says that to Paul at the time.

He is simply stopped, twice, without a reason, and then given a direction.

You are in the part of that account where a man is stopped without being told why, and Luke never once fills in the reason for him. Acts 16:6 says forbidden and gives no explanation anywhere in the chapter, and it is the Holy Spirit who is named there as the one doing the stopping and who still does not explain Himself to the men it is happening to.

What your pastor said, and what he could not know

Now the second year and the hand on the arm, because it deserves to be dealt with properly rather than resented.

He said God closed those doors.

He may be right. That is the honest position and it is the one nobody offers you. It is possible. It is also possible that a system did what systems do and that God has been at work in where you landed without having arranged the refusals.

Nobody can tell from outside. Paul knew because he was told, in a vision, with a man standing in it. You were not told. You got a paragraph.

And the difference between those two situations is enormous, and your pastor collapsed it, in good faith, with his hand on your arm.

You are allowed to hold it open rather than close it in either direction, and Paul only closed his because he was shown something. Acts 16:9 gives him a vision before he draws a conclusion, and it is the Holy Spirit who is the one who does that showing rather than a person doing it on His behalf in a second year.

And here is why holding it open is not weakness. If you accept that God closed those doors, you have to accept a God who took away two years of language learning and a room and a job in order to move you, and you would then have to work out how you feel about Him doing that, and you have never done that work because you have been too busy being grateful for the table.

Holding it open means you do not owe that reckoning to a sentence somebody else made up.

You have not been given a reason and you are not required to invent one to be at peace. Scripture leaves Asia and Bithynia unexplained across the whole chapter, and it is the Holy Spirit who is able to keep a person steady inside a question rather than requiring them to answer it.

What can be said about the table

So here is what can be said, cleanly, and it does not cost you the refusals.

There is a table. Fourteen places. Three years. It exists because you were here and because you started it in the fifth month above that shop when you had nothing to do on a Tuesday and neither did anybody else.

God has been in it. That is not a claim about the refusals. It is a claim about the table.

And the man of Macedonia in that passage is not a plan revealed, it is a person standing there saying come and help us, and what Paul does next is get on a boat. The passage is about a need in front of somebody rather than a purpose behind them.

You have had a need in front of you for three years and you have been on the boat the whole time. Acts 16:10 has them concluding from the vision and going immediately, and it is the Holy Spirit who is at work in what happens in a city rather than being credited with the paperwork that put a man there.

I am not going to tell you the other city was wrong for you. I do not know. It may have been good and you may have been good at it, and that possibility does not have to be denied for a table to be a table.