I Apologize Before Anybody Asks

The door opens and the sentence is already out.

It is only a few of us. Sometimes it is: I should warn you, it is only a few of us. Once, memorably, she got as far as sorry, before hello.

Six of them, most weeks. Sometimes eight. Once, in a bad February, it was her and a man called Ellis who has a cough.

The sentence has been coming out for about two years and she did not notice it until October, when a woman she had invited from the bus stop came the whole way in the rain, half an hour, wrong shoes, holding a plant she had bought as a thing to bring.

And the door opened and the first words that woman heard were: it is only a few of us.

She saw it land. That is the part that has stayed. There was a small adjustment in that woman's face, half a second, the kind of adjustment a person makes when they have got somewhere and been told, very kindly, that it is not much.

She stayed. She came back twice. She has not come since the spring and there is no evidence at all that it was the sentence, and it is the first thing that arrives at four in the morning.

Here is the honest version of what the sentence is for, and it took her until about June to get to it.

It is not modesty. It is insurance.

If she says it first, nobody else can be disappointed at her. She has priced it in. She has told them not to expect much and therefore cannot be found to have overpromised, and she has been doing that at her own front door, to people arriving out of the rain, for two years.

Fear not, little flock, and He calls them that on purpose

Stand in the doorway a minute, because there is a sentence He says to a small group of frightened people, and the adjective in it is not an insult and He is not apologizing for them.

Fear not, little flock; for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.Luke 12:32

Little flock.

He says it. He is not being talked down to by somebody else and He is not conceding a point to a critic. He calls them little, out loud, and the word in that language is the affectionate one, the one you use for something small that you are fond of, and the Holy Spirit kept it in the record exactly as He said it.

And then, in the same breath, without a pause: it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.

The smallness and the kingdom are in one sentence and there is nothing between them. No condition. No when you have grown. No if this improves.

Hear this on your own step. You are not running something that needs a warning label, and the written word is what settles it. Scripture puts the word little in the mouth of Christ as an endearment for the people He is handing a kingdom to, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has been in that hall on the weeks it was six and on the week it was two.

Now let me name the insurance, because you named it yourself in June and that is more than most people manage.

Pricing it in protects you and it costs the person on the step.

They cannot receive a welcome and a discount at the same time. Whatever you say second, the first thing they heard was a downward adjustment, and a person adjusts downward far faster than they adjust back.

That is not a scolding and I am not putting the woman in the rain on you. There is no evidence it was the sentence and four in the morning is a liar about causation. Hear this and let it go: you are not responsible for whether she came back, and Scripture is what says so, because the written word puts the adding in the Lord's hands and never in a hostess's opening line, and the Spirit of God has never once made a woman's greeting the hinge of somebody else's faith.

And now the thing that will actually change Thursday, and it is a subtraction rather than an addition.

You do not have to say anything positive about the size. Nothing here asks you to announce that six is wonderful, and it would come out strained and you know it.

You only have to not say the other thing.

Open the door. Say welcome. Take the coat. That is a complete sentence and a complete act and it has nothing in it for anybody to adjust downward from.