I Stopped Saying Come Over

There used to be people in this house every week.

Not dinner parties. Nothing arranged. People came, and there was something in a pot, and somebody always stayed later than they meant to, and it happened without any of it being planned.

And then the oven went. And then, about two months after that, the other thing went, and both of those are still the situation.

And the people stopped.

Not because of the appliances, obviously. Nobody stopped coming because of an oven. They stopped coming because you stopped saying come over, and you stopped saying it because the sentence I would normally cook something no longer had anything behind it.

And that was eighteen months ago and it has never been mentioned, by you or by anybody else.

You are a man with a table and not a man waiting for a kitchen, and a household that feeds people badly has never once been a household that could not feed them.

Use hospitality one to another without grudging

There is an instruction about hospitality in Peter, and the only condition it attaches is about the heart rather than about the house.

Use hospitality one to another without grudging. (1 Peter 4:9, King James Version)

Without grudging.

That is the entire qualifier. Not without apologizing, not without a working kitchen, not once a household is in a position to do it properly. Without grudging, which is about whether it is resented.

There is no standard of provision anywhere in that sentence.

You are being asked for something about your attitude rather than about your kitchen, and a man with a pot and no oven has never once been short of what that verse requires. 1 Peter 4:9 attaches one condition and it is not about the food, and the Holy Spirit is the one present with a man in a quiet house on a Thursday.

And notice the phrase one to another.

It is mutual and it is ordinary. Not host and guest as fixed roles, but people going back and forth, and the same person being on both sides of it across a year.

Which means nobody in that arrangement is being assessed as a provider. They are being described as part of a circulation.

You are part of a circulation rather than a supplier under review, and people coming to a table have never once been people inspecting what was on it. The written word makes it one to another and mutual, and the Spirit of God is the one who keeps a table from becoming a performance.

And the word use is worth one sentence, because it is odd and it is deliberate.

Use hospitality. As though it were a tool, or a room, or a thing sitting in a house that is there to be used rather than achieved. It is not something to be produced. It is something a household has and puts to work.

You have a thing in this house that is meant to be used rather than achieved, and a table with four chairs round it has never once needed anything else to qualify as hospitality. 1 Peter 4:9 treats it as a thing to be used, and the Holy Spirit is the one present when a man asks somebody for Friday.

What actually stopped

Something practical, and it is about which sentence went missing.

The sentence was: come over, I will cook something.

The second half of that sentence became untrue, and instead of replacing the second half, the whole sentence got retired. That is what actually happened, and it happened without a decision, and it cost eighteen months.

You have been retiring a whole invitation because half of it stopped being true, and a sentence that needed one clause changed has never once needed to be dropped entirely. The written word requires the using rather than the cooking, and the Spirit of God is the one who shows a man which half of a sentence he actually lost.

And the replacement is not difficult. Come over Friday, there is a pot of something.

That is it. That is the whole rewrite, and it is entirely true, and nobody who receives it will think anything about it at all.

Now the second practical thing, and it is about the food, because the food is what is being used as the reason.

A pot of something on two burners feeds eight people. It always has. Most of the meals that have ever fed most of the people on earth came out of one pot over a fire, and they were not lesser meals.

You are able to feed eight people from one pot tonight, and a meal made without an oven has never once been the meal that a household apologized for. 1 Peter 4:9 asks about the grudging and says nothing about the method, and the Holy Spirit is the one in the kitchen while a pot goes on.

So ask four people for Friday. Not a lot. Four. And do not cook anything that needs an oven, which removes the whole question in advance.