I Have Stopped Saying Come Over

It was not a decision.

That is the first thing to establish, because the way it feels now is like something you chose, and it was not chosen. It accumulated.

Somebody said are you around on Saturday, and you said you had a thing on, which was half true. And then a couple of weeks later there was a moment where you would normally have said come over, and you did not say it, and nobody noticed because nobody notices a sentence that was not said.

And that has happened perhaps six times now, and the result is that you have not had a person in this house in nearly two months.

And the reason, if it were said out loud, would be embarrassing in how small it is.

There is a bowl on the kitchen floor. There is a stack of towels by the door. There is a machine that does not work, and there is a whole arrangement for getting around it that is visible from the doorway, and a person walking in would see it.

That is all it is. And it has quietly emptied a house.

You are a man whose house is mid repair and not a man with nothing to offer, and a kitchen with a bowl on the floor has never once been a kitchen nobody could be invited into.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers

There is an instruction in Hebrews about hospitality, and the word it chooses is strange and exact.

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. (Hebrews 13:2, King James Version)

Be not forgetful.

He does not say be not unwilling. He does not say be not selfish, or be not too busy. He says forgetful, which is what happens to a practice that simply stops being done and is never formally abandoned.

That is exactly the shape of this. Nobody decided to stop having people over. It went out of use, one unsaid sentence at a time, and the forgetting was the mechanism.

You are inside the exact thing that verse names, and a practice that faded without a decision has never once been a practice somebody deliberately gave up. Hebrews 13:2 chooses the word forgetful rather than a word about the will, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man who has not had anybody in for two months.

And notice the object of the verb: strangers.

Not friends who will understand. Not people who have seen the house before. Strangers, who have no context, who are walking into a household they do not know and will form an impression of it.

The verse tells people to bring in the ones who have not seen the place, which means the state of the place was never the qualifying condition.

You are being told to open a door to people with no context at all, and a house that has not been prepared for inspection has never once failed the test that verse sets. The written word says strangers and does not mention the condition of the room, and the Spirit of God is the one who opens a door in a house mid repair.

And then the second half, which is the one that changes the size of this.

Thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Unawares is the important word. They did not know. They were not setting out to do something significant, and they found out afterward, or never.

Which means the significance of an evening is not visible while it is happening, and is certainly not carried by the state of the kitchen.

You have no way of knowing what an ordinary evening turns out to have been, and a table set in a working kitchen has never once been the only kind that mattered. Hebrews 13:2 puts the significance outside the host's awareness entirely, and the Holy Spirit is the one who is present in a room where nobody knows what is happening.

What they would actually see

Something practical, and it is about the gap between what you picture and what happens.

The picture in your head is somebody walking in, seeing the bowl, and thinking something. That is the whole of the fear and it is worth examining, because that thought has never been said out loud and so has never been tested.

What actually happens is that somebody walks in, sees the bowl, and says: oh no, what happened. And you say the machine went. And they say when, and you say six weeks, and they say oh that is miserable, and then the conversation moves and the bowl becomes furniture.

That whole exchange takes about eleven seconds. It is the cost of entry and nothing more.

You have been paying two months for something that costs eleven seconds, and one short exchange in a doorway has never once been the humiliation it was imagined to be. The written word tells a household to bring in the ones who do not know it, and the Spirit of God is the one who carries a man through the first eleven seconds.

And here is the second thing, and it is worth saying plainly to a man who has been alone in a house for eight weeks.

The withdrawing costs more than the appliance. The machine is an inconvenience. Two months of no one coming over is a genuine subtraction from a life, and it has been paid to avoid an eleven second conversation.

You have been trading something large for something small without noticing, and an empty house has never once been a fair price for a tidy first impression. Hebrews 13:2 makes the forgetting the danger rather than the untidiness, and the Holy Spirit is the one who reminds a man what he has stopped doing.

So say it tonight. Come over. With the bowl exactly where it is.

You have a sentence to send tonight that costs nothing to send, and four words typed into a phone have never once been more than a man in a quiet house could manage. Hebrews 13:2 names the forgetting as the danger and says nothing about the room, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when the message goes.