The Door She Keeps On The Latch

That door is on the latch from about eight in the morning and it has been for as long as anybody can remember.

People come. That is simply the arrangement on that street and everybody knows it. Her kettle has been on more or less continuously for fifteen years and there is a specific chair that visitors sit in and a specific tin that comes out.

She loves it. Do not read this as a woman worn down by hospitality, because she is not, and she would be insulted by the suggestion.

Here is what she worked out three weeks ago and has told nobody.

She has not been inside anybody else's house in over two years.

Not once. Not for a cup of tea, not for a sit down, not for anything. People have invited her, and she has always had a reason, and the reasons have always been true, and there have been about forty of them over two years.

She is not avoiding anybody. She could not tell you what she is doing.

The nearest she has got to explaining it to herself is that in her own kitchen she knows exactly what the job is. She pours, she listens, she says the right thing. And in somebody else's kitchen she does not know what the job is, and there might not be one, and then what is she doing there.

Two years. Forty invitations. All declined pleasantly.

If your door is on the latch and you never go through anybody else's, come and sit down. Nothing here is going to become a confession.

The one another goes both directions or it is not the law of Christ

There is a sentence in Galatians everybody remembers as an instruction to help people, and the first two words are the ones that carry it.

Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ.Galatians 6:2

One another. A reciprocal word. Not bear the burdens of others, which would describe a helper and a helped. One another, which describes traffic in both directions and requires everybody in it to do both jobs.

So a woman whose door is always open and who never walks through anybody else's has not exceeded that verse. She has stepped halfway out of it, and taken a whole street with her, because every person who sits in your chair is being kept from ever doing for you what you do for them.

That is not an accusation. It is the shape of it, and nobody has ever mentioned it because it looks exactly like generosity.

You were made to be received as well as to receive people, and going is provision rather than need. Galatians 6:2 puts both directions inside one instruction, and it is the Holy Spirit who binds people into one body in the first place, so sitting in somebody else's kitchen is the arrangement working rather than a favor being asked.

In their kitchen there is no job, and that is the point

Now let me name the real obstacle, because you have almost named it yourself.

In your own kitchen you know what the job is. You pour, you listen, you say the right thing. It is not a performance, but it is a role, and you are extremely good at it, and it means you always know why you are in the room.

In somebody else's kitchen there is no job.

And that is not a problem to be solved. That is the actual offer. Being somewhere for no reason except that somebody wanted you there is a thing you have not let happen in two years, and it is one of the ordinary goods of being alive.

Nobody is proposing a group or an arrangement, which this site does not hand anybody. Nobody is asking you to need anything.

One person. One true sentence, and then going when they next ask.

I have not been in anybody's house in two years and I only just noticed. I am fine, and I have realized I do not know how to be somewhere without a job. Ask me again. I will come.

That is the whole thing. It makes nobody responsible for you. It simply means a thing that lived only inside you now lives between two people.

You have permission to be somewhere with nothing to do, and nobody loses anything by it. Hebrews 10:24 says to consider how to stir one another up to love and good works, and it is the Spirit who binds that company together, so a woman who accepts an invitation has not stopped being the one with the open door.

And here is the ground it stands on. God is the one keeping you while you keep that kettle on. You are already known completely, and you were never actually unseen in your own kitchen. Psalm 139:2 says He knows when you sit down and when you rise up, and it is His Spirit who has been at that table every one of those fifteen years, so nobody knowing is not the same as nobody watching.