Half The Things Here Do Not Work

The oven door is held with a chair.

The light in the back room does not come on unless somebody flicks it twice. The window in the hall has been taped since February. The machine in the corner does something on the spin that everybody has learned to ignore.

And none of that is remarkable in this house anymore, which is the actual subject of this.

Because somebody came round on Sunday and watched your daughter get a plate out by holding the door with her hip, and it registered on their face for about a quarter of a second, and you saw it.

And since then you have been seeing the whole house the way they saw it, which is not how it looked on Saturday.

And what has been running underneath ever since is a question that does not have a good shape, and it is something like: is this a home, or is this a house that we are getting through.

You are living in a home tonight exactly as it is, and a working kitchen has never once been the thing that made a house one.

Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith

There is a proverb that puts two households side by side and then ranks them, and the ranking is the opposite of what anybody expects.

Better is a dry morsel, and quietness therewith, than an house full of sacrifices with strife. (Proverbs 17:1, King James Version)

Better is a dry morsel.

A dry morsel is not a meal. It is a piece of bread with nothing on it, and the proverb is honest about that and does not dress it up as sufficiency.

And it is set against a house full of sacrifices, which in that world means meat, feasting, plenty, the household visibly doing well.

And the comparison comes out the other way from how everybody assumes, and the thing that tips it is quietness.

You are in a house where the thing that ranks highest is present, and a household with peace in it has never once been ranked below a household with everything working. The Holy Spirit is the one present with somebody seeing their own kitchen through a visitor's eyes, and Proverbs 17:1 puts quietness above plenty and says so directly.

Now notice what quietness means there, because it is not silence and it is not calm in the decorative sense.

It is the absence of strife. No grinding. No household at odds with itself. People able to be in a room together without something running underneath.

That is the thing being ranked above a full table, and it is a thing that a household either has or does not, and it is not visible from the doorway.

You have something in this house that does not show from a doorway, and a quarter of a second on a visitor's face has never once been an assessment of what a household actually has. The written word ranks the unseen thing above the visible one, and the Spirit of God is the one who knows which of the two this house is full of.

And notice the proverb does not pretend the dry morsel is nice.

It does not say the bread is secretly better. It does not say a household without plenty is not missing anything. It admits the lack plainly and then says the other thing matters more, which is a completely different move from pretending.

You are allowed to want the things that are broken fixed, and a household that minds about a taped window has never once been a household failing to be grateful. The Holy Spirit is the one who lets a family want more without being ungrateful for what they have, and Proverbs 17:1 admits the dryness of the morsel and ranks it anyway.

The adaptations are competence

Something practical, and it is about what those adaptations actually are.

Your daughter holds the door with her hip. Somebody flicks the light twice. Nobody in this house has thought about any of that for months, and a stranger cannot do a single one of them.

That is not decline. That is a household that has learned its own building, and every one of those small moves is a piece of knowledge that exists in these people and nowhere else.

You are living in a house that this family knows how to operate, and a set of adaptations nobody has to think about has never once been a set of failures. The written word ranks a household by what is between the people in it, and the Spirit of God is the one who reads a hip against an oven door correctly.

And here is the thing about the waiting, because that is the part actually costing something.

There has been a quiet expectation that real life restarts when the house is sorted. That the good version of this family is the one that lives in a working house, and this one is a rehearsal.

That expectation is the thing to put down tonight, because the working house is not coming this month and the rehearsal has been going on for two years.

You are living the actual life rather than rehearsing one, and two years in a house that needs work have never once been two years of waiting to start. The Holy Spirit is the one present in an ordinary evening in an imperfect kitchen, and Proverbs 17:1 locates the better household in the quietness rather than in the fixtures.

So eat in that room tonight. All of you, sitting down, with the oven door held by a chair.

Not as a statement and not to prove anything. Because that is the room and that is the family and tonight is a night.

You have a table in a room with a broken oven in it and people who will sit at it, and a family eating in an imperfect kitchen has never once been a family waiting for a better one. The Holy Spirit is the one at that table with all of you, and Proverbs 17:1 ranks the quietness above the plenty.